Decoding Mi Ultimo Adios Verses 7-11

Verse 7

Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,

Deja que el alba envíe su resplandor fugaz,

Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,

Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,

Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz.

 

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,

Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,

Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;

And if on my cross a bird should be seen,

Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

 

The moon makes its first appearance here and perhaps with more reason than mere romantic imagery. The moon is associated with femininity and feminine deity, she shines by the light of the sun, a male element, yet it is a light that she transforms. Compare earlier verses and the reference to the ‘(friar’s) cowl of gloom’. No stars or moon can be seen through such a cowl, yet here the moon shines brightly, the cowl, ie. The friars have gone and the Patria is free to shine her light.

 

Here also is a repetition of the imagery of the dawn, the dawn of redemption, now shining its light over his grave. Although he refers to the night, ie., the moon, and the dawn, he does not refer to the day, perhaps because the day of liberation is already here.

 

Only the wind, impersonal, will lament over his grave. Again he uses a qualifying ‘si’ – ‘if’ when writing of the bird that may rest on the cross above him. It does not lament him but sings of peace, the peace that comes with liberation and the peace with which he rests below.

 

Verse 8

 

Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore

Y al cielo tornen puras, con mi clamor en pos;

Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore

Y en las serenas tardes cuando por mí alguien ore,

¡Ora también, oh Patria, por mi descanso a Dios!

 

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,

And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;

Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh

And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high

From thee, O my country, that in God, I may rest.

 

Again we have the male principle, the Sun and the female principle, the Earth. The Sun evaporates the water from the Earth, cleansing it, in doing so the water rises, taking with it Rizal’s last cry, itself pure and unsullied, part of his spirit.

 

“Let a friend grieve for my early death” says line three. Here Rizal may be subtly reminding us of why he died – for the redemption of his country, one could hardly grieve over his earl death without giving pause to why he died.

 

The penultimate line reads better as “When someone prays for me in the serene afternoon, which to a modern reader may mean little. There was only one moment each afternoon when stillness and serenity ruled at the time of Rizal’s death – at the ringing of the Angelus when prayers were made, which very devout Catholics still make, to the incarnation of God in Christ. Christ, of course, was executed in his 30s for the redemption of mankind just as Rizal was executed for the redemption of his country.

 

To many Filipinos, Rizal appear as a Christlike figure and it is not far-fetched to suggest that in these lines, Rizal himself drew the same parallel.

 

Rizal’s relationship with God, and he certainly believed in a deity, has been subject to much controversy. From his letters, especially those to his mother, who was much concerned with which neighbourhood her son would end up in the hereafter, he believed God to be humane and rational, a reasoning Almighty who would recognize that Rizal’s intentions were good, even if he upset members of the Catholic church. In other words, he believed he could make peace with God, hence the last line of this stanza.

 

Verse 9

 

Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,

Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,

Por nuestras pobres madres que gimen su amargura;

Por huérfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura

Y ora por ti que veas tu redención final.

 

Pray for all those that hapless have died,

For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;

For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,

For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried,

And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

 

Rizal asks the Patria to pray for various groups of the deceased who have died, it is apparent contextually, in pursuit of the revolution against Spain, leading off with those who have died ‘in ventura’, probably here best interpreted as those who have died with achieving their goal, or at least before that goal can be achieved.

 

The Derbyshire translation uses ‘unmeasur’d pain’ in place of the Spanish ‘tormentos sin igual’ in line two which is probably inadequate. Torment would include the pain of separation from family that is a necessary concomitant of the warrior, the pain of the family itself not knowing whether their loved one is alive or not, the pain of actual injury and disease at a when then, even by contemporary standards, the available medical care among the warriors was at best rudimentary. There is also the torment of living in the field. These are not the torments of actual battle, but the hardships that must be endured.

 

In the mother-orientated culture of the Filipino male it is not surprising that Rizal gives more time to mothers than other family members, a whole line for mothers, a third of a line each for orphan and widows. In the latter case he links them to prisoners being tortured. What we have here is the pain of entire families who fathers, brothers and sons are fighting, dying, being incarcerated and tortured. It isn’t only those whose fight that must withstand suffering, but those at home, too.

 

Lastly, he appeals to the Patria to pray for her own ‘redención final’, her final redemption. Struggle, whether as a violent revolution or the seeking of liberty by other means, is a process of redemption, it is only when that process is complete, and the Patria free, that the redemption is ‘final’.

 

 

Verse 10

 

Y cuando en noche oscura se envuelva el cementerio

Y solos sólo muertos queden velando allí,

No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,

Tal vez acordes oigas de cítara o salterio,

Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti.

 

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around

With only the dead in their vigil to see,

Break not my repose or the mystery profound,

And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;

‘Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

 

This verse doesn’t really appear to belong here.  It would have been more appropriate one or two verses earlier, or at least before verse 10.  Perhaps  it is a sign of hurried composition, something written without the proper editing that marks a great writer – one French novelist wrote to a friend an apologized about it’s length ‘I didn’t have time to make it shorter’. I would suggest that the present verse 9 is out of place and may have been written later that other verse.

 

Rizal has previously talked about his grave alone and desolate. Now there is a cemetery. Derbyshire’s line ‘Break not my repose’ is wrong, ‘my’ should be ‘their’. In earlier verses Rizal used repetition for emphasis – Salud… Salud – Deja…Deja, and here uses it again with “No turbes su reposos, no tubes el misterio” – do not disturb their repose, no not disturb the mystery”.

 

With a classical education, Rizal would have been familiar with the derivation of ‘mystery’ from the Greek ‘mystērion’ in the sense of a divine secret or divine knowledge known only to initiates and revealed through ritual, it is still used in that sense in the Catholic mass, the Catholic mysteries being ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is born again’. Death is a mystery in itself , now revealed to those in the cemetery.

 

Derbyshire appears to depart almost entirely from Rizal’s Spanish text in the fourth line, where Rizal talks of the Patria hearing the note of a psalter or zither, there is no mention of a sad hymn at all and, indeed, as the final line shows, this is a song sung in praise to Patria so there is no rationale for sadness.

 

The choice of the psalter, a guitar-like stringed instrument played with the bare fingers, is interesting because, apart from being a musical instrument it is also the biblical Book of Psalms. In the Old Testament English translation the term ‘psalter’ is often used instead of harp, which is more correct. Unlike the psalter or the zither, the biblical harp does not have a soundbox.

 

The Psalter, then, has religious connotations. The Patria was Rizal’s religion, her redemption the object of that religion just as the redemption of man from sin is the object of the Catholic religion. The last line of Verse three makes this even more clear.

 

The zither is another stringed instrument, and also confused in the Old Testament with the harp. It has a squarish, flat soundbox and is plucked with fingers or, in some versions, with a mallet or plectrum, again it is mentioned in the bible in place of the harp.

 

In a sense, Rizal is talking of singing a hymn, one of praise to the Patria as is explicit in his last line.

 

Again, Rizal use repetition for emphasis as in the third line, which is better translated as “It is I, beloved Patria, it is I who sing the song to you”.

 

Alone among the dead, then, Rizal praises the Patria as Catholics praise Mary.

 

Verse 11

 

Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada

No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su lugar,

Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la azada,

Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,

El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar.

 

And even my grave is remembered no more,

Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone,

Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er

That my ashes may carpet the earthly floor,

Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

 

Little clarification is needed here. When his grave and the signs that marked it are long gone he wants his ashes spread by the plough and the spade to carpet Filipinas, to become one with it, with his beloved. A second thread here is that the ashes are his physical remains, his thoughts, words and philosophy are his intellectual remains. The symbolic ashes can also be seen as the remains of Rizal’s thoughts being spread across Filipinas, to fertilize the new, free country long after he himself is forgotten.

Rizal’s lost bio

Today is the birthday of Jose Rizal and one wonders what he’s thinking beneath his tomb on the Luneta. By coincidence I just happened to be thumbing through some forgotten, and now defunct, magazines on Philippine film and wondered what happened to Edward Gross’s biography of Rizal?

Edward Gross was one of the pioneers of film-making in the Philippines and made the first feature-length (for the day, it was 5,000 feet) movie on the national hero: “The Life of Jose Rizal”. A competitor, Charles Yearsley, actually beat him to the box-office, though, with a 500 foot quickie called “The Execution of Jose Rizal” and filched the same actors. Gross’s film premiered on August 12, 1912 on the 14^th anniversary of the cessation of Spanish-American hostilities in 1898 and exactly a day short of the Spanish surrender to Dewey in Manila and a year and one month since another cinematographic entrepreneur (cum mercenary) LM Johnson allegedly signed the Philippine Declaration of Independence. Gross went on to put the Noli and the Fili on celluloid with his wife, the talented actress Titay Molina, as Maria Clara.

Gross was a Rizal fan and, before making the movie based on Rizal’s life, apparently wrote a biography on the Philippine national hero. There were still plenty of people around who had known Rizal, and maybe had even seen the execution and one wonders whether Gross actually researched his subject in any depth. Do any copies of the biography exist?

Be that as it may, one idea that has gone the rounds is that the famous photograph of the Rizal execution is just a still from Gross’s or Yearsley’s films in the 1912. At least two copies of the execution photograph by Manuel Arias Rodriguez exist, one in a museum in Madrid, another in a museum in Cavite, both are albumin prints, a technology not longer used in 1912, and anyone familiar with stills taken from films of the period would immediately dismiss the notion that they were frames from films.

 

So the diminutive man in the bowler hat in the famous picture is indeed, Jose Rizal.

Independence Day Mysteries

F

Forgive me for borrowing your Independence Day. Being British I don’t have one of my own. Colonized by all and sundry over a thousand years, the Brits never won a war of independence so on June 12 I hang out the red, blue, white and yellow and glue myself to the television to watch the ceremonies along Roxas Boulevard to savor a nation’s pride and hear the eternal arguments about which is the ‘real’ independence day for the Philippines.

Of course, what’s important is not the date, but the meaning. After all, Jesus Christ wasn’t born on December 25, or January 6 according to some Christian church traditions, yet these are still celebrated as his birthday. January 1 was not always New Year’s Day, which was once celebrated in March. New Year’s Eve in 1844 vanished entirely in Manila with December 30 followed by January 1 after the Spanish discovered that their ‘Philippine Time’ was whole day out of whack thanks to sloppy navigation in the 16^th century.

Nevertheless, this is the time of year when that hoary old argument between the June 12 supporters and the July 4 supporters gets re-aired like an old blanket in storage. July 4 is the ‘real’ independence day say the latter because it’s the day when the United States granted and recognized the Philippines formal, if not full, independence.

In fact, the United States itself does not celebrate the day of recognition of its independence, but the day in 1776 when it was merely declared, July 4. Its status was not formally recognised by Britain until September 3, 1786 at the end of peace talks in Paris, bring the American insurgency to an end.

So, to accept July 4 as the ‘real’ Philippine Independence Day, one should celebrate American independence on September 3. What’s good for the Philippine goose ought to be good for the American gander.

We have the father of former-President Ate Glo, President Diosdado Macapagal, to thank for the fact that today we honour Independence Day on June 12, or possibly John F. Kennedy, or Professor Gabriel Fabella. In the first place, of course, we have to thank Emilio Aguinaldo.

Inevitably, the Declaration of Independence carries it own baggage of myth and mystery. We often imagine Aguinaldo on June 12 proudly waving the Philippine flag as he declared independence from a balcony that didn’t actually exist until the 1930s. No wonder the carved carabao holding it up looks dazed.

Rear Admiral George Dewey, was invited to the affair but, under orders to avoid contact with the revolutionaries, he decided to read his mail instead.

The actual declaration was made not by Aguinaldo but by Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, Auditor of War and Special Commissioner designated to make the proclamation.

The sole paleface in the assembly was the mysterious L. M. Johnson, Colonel of Artillery who supposedly signed the Philippine Declaration of Independence but did not.

He is variously described in history textbooks as Dewey’s secretary and the commander of an American artillery unit. He was neither of these – a rear-admiral of the US Navy would hardly have a full US Army colonel as his secretary, and his name does not appear in the roster of the Olympia.

According to American journalist Trumbull White, who attended the celebrations, Johnson was “actually in charge of the ordinance of the insurgent forces”. According to White, Johnson was cheered and born on the shoulders of celebrating Filipinos with enthusiasm.

Who actually was L.M. Johnson? He was a former hotel-keeper from Shanghai who was trying his luck with the Xbox of the time, the cinematograph. He may be the same L. M. Johnson who was a private in the Army of Hawaii in 1894, led by expatriate American businessmen who all seem to be called Dole, which eventually managed to leverage the annexation of Hawaii. L. M. Johnson earned his artillery props at the Battle of Moilili firing a field gun. Apparently a soldier of fortune he also fought in the war between Chile and Peru and elsewhere in South America.

Eventually, Johnson seems to have become a junior partner in an American company that operated a bar called the Alhambra on the Escolta, which was sued for debt in August 1901.

Johnson became volunteer deputy fire chief of Manila and, according to his descendants, went to Japan to learn the pearl fishing industry and eventually died trying to rescue members of his Filipino workforce in a storm.

The next step was the ratification of independence at Malolos on September 29. The description of the fine banquet afterwards is best left to Ambeth Ocampo. There were, fact, two banquets that day, for lunch and dinner and both presenting a minor mystery – how did they freeze the frozen strawberry preserves and Mocha ice-cream and chill the Champagne without ice from an ice-plant? The answer is probably in a long-forgotten bit of simple technology known to the grandparents of our grandparents: The food to be chilled was placed in a wooden pail filled with a chemical that produced and endothermic reaction when mixed with water – it got cold enough to freeze water.

All of which became largely moot with the American occupation of the Philippines and Filipinos would have to wait until October 14, 1943 for its next Independence Day. Okay, so it was issued by the Japanese and wasn’t taken seriously, nevertheless, it was another date on the independence calendar.

Next, of course, came July 4, 1946, with appropriate ceremonies and 21-gun salutes from American, Portuguese and Thai warships in Manila Bay. A qualified independence, yes, but even worse, one to be forever overshadowed by that of the United States itself. Inevitably, that inequity rankled. Philippine embassy parties were rather sparsely attended. As a result, the Philippine ambassador to London decided to hold his shindig a few days earlier and scored a hit.

Historian Gabriel Fabella decided enough was enough and in 1956 first floated the idea of changing Philippine Independence Day to June 12 in the Sunday Times Magazine. Over the next few years he continued to push the idea, but few snapped at the bait. In 1959 the Philippine Historical Society adopted a resolution supporting the change but it remained an idea whose time had yet to come. Significantly, his biggest audience came in 1961 in a radio broadcast from Legaspi City.

Then came a little to-do in 1962 between the Philippines and the United States and Presidents Macapagal and Kennedy respectively. The Philippines refused to allow the importation of American Virginia tobacco and powerful tobacco interests in the US Congress blocked the $73 million War Damage Bill that would fulfill post war promises made to the country. President Kennedy was firmly behind the bill and criticized Congress for its “lack of appreciation of the moral obligation the United States owes to the people of the Philippines”.

At the time, Macapagal was scheduled to visit the US. The visit was cancelled and Macapagal coincidentally remembered that, as a Congressman, he’d thought that Independence Day should be changed to June 12, just like Fabella.

As it happened, there was no law designating July 4 as Independence Day, it was merely a national holiday. As businessmen have become increasingly aware in recent years, Presidents can grant a national holiday at the drop of a hat. Macapagal announced June 12 as a national holiday and sent a bill to the Philippine Congress marked urgent to make the day the statutory independence day.

Emilio Aguinaldo was overjoyed at the change to June 12 and fulsome in his praise for Macapagal. Eyeing the Rizal Monument he wondered aloud to Macapagal whether there would ever be a matching Aguinaldo monument.

Efforts to revive the War Damage Bill were eventually successful, and Macapagal expended a great deal of presidential ink to assure Americans that the whole thing was not done in a fit of pique.

While Filipinos rather enjoyed having their own Independence Day their legislators felt otherwise and wanted to find some celebration for July 4. So it was that July 4 became Republic Day and is today known as Fil-Am Friendship Day, not that many folk take notice. With that bit of horse-trading out of the way, Macapagal could sign Republic Act 4186 on August 4, 1964, a little more than two years after he’d first put the measure to Congress as ‘urgent’.

It was, however, too late for Aguinaldo, who died in February 1964 and let us with an intriguing question:

Why didn’t Aguinaldo sign the Declaration of Independence?

End Of Veneration PDF online

For those interested in the Debate about Constantino’s Veneration Without Understanding I’ve provided a pdf version dowloadable from

http://www.geocities.com/bobcouttie/The_End_Of_Veneration.pdf

A Rizal Breakfast

If you want a taste of what Rizal had for breakfast first make some chocolat-e (chocolat-espesyal), use the tabletas, they’re not easy to find but they are around, one or more per cup. Preferably the unsweetened ones. DO NOT USE HERSHY’S!!!  Boil water enough for however many cups you’re making, drop in the tabletas, use whisk and whisk until the tableta’s are dissolved and you have a rich, thick chocolate. There’s theobromine in there by the way, which gives real chocolate something of a kick. With more water it’s called chocolat aguada.

In the Spanish era Philippine chocolate was so highly regarded that the best chocolate came to be known as Filipinos. A name which a biscuit maker still gives to its product in Spain and Latin America.

Next get some sardinas secas , that’s the posh name for common tuyo, small dried fish about the size of your finger common everywhere. Fry the tuyo a little, get yourself some rice and you’re done. Eat the tuyo, drink the chocolate while you’re thinking about what’s it’s like to be shot in the back.

A trick question, what did Rizal have for breakfast on the morning of his execution?

He had nothing. He was given a couple of boiled eggs but left them for the rats saying something alone the lines of ‘You might as well have a fiesta’.

Decoding Mi Ultimo Adios Verse 5

Verse 5

Ensueño de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo anhelo,

¡Salud te grita el alma que pronto va a partir!

¡Salud! Ah, que es hermoso caer por darte vuelo,

Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,

Y en tu encantada tierra la eternidad dormir.

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,

All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;

All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;

To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;

And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

In talking of the ‘dream’ of his life and his “living, burning desire/fantasy” Rizal addresses the Patria of the imminent future, the Patria without sorrow, shame or stain, the Patria of his imagination, Filipinas as he would wish her to be and, more important, expects her to be for in line two he welcomes her arrival.

Salud has the sense of mabuhay, cheers, a votre sante, prosit, kampie, a term that is directly translatable into every language, Asian and Western. Significantly it is a term of distinctively positive value. Rizal welcomes the coming of the redeemed Patria at the moment his soul is about to depart as it verse three he refers to the imminent liberation of the country, its dawn of freedom.

His repetition of ‘salud’in the third line is the rousing cheer that greats a triumphal entry into the arena, the cheer of the crowd to a champion, bringing from the duplication of ‘Mis sueños cuando’, what was his dream is now a reality.

The sense of ‘it is beautiful to fall so that you can take flight/fly’ suggests that prehaps he expected his death to inspire the ongoing revolution or otherwise serve to liberate Patria. In flying, Patria, in the fourth verse becomes the sky, no longer in bondage but free and he is dying beneath her as the sky.

While Derbyshire uses quite abstract imagery in the last line Rizal gives us a very concrete image of Patria’s ‘enchanted earth’ (Other translators use this more correct terminology) . Notably he does not say ‘sacred earth’, perhaps because it would echo too much Christianity, in particular what Rizal perceived as the debased Christianity practiced in the Philippines. Enchantment also leads us, perhaps, to those ancient natural forces that surrounded the ancient pre-Hispanic Filipino and who, as spirits, ruled their daily lives. He rejects on and embraces, or is embraced by the other. At the same time. Enchantment implies the sense of captivation, enthrallment that Patria inspires. The earth of the Patria, therefore, has special, magical qualities.

The redemption of the Patria, in Rizal’s eyes was not a long-term objective but imminent, touchable and achievable.

Verse 6>

Decoding Mi Ultimo Adios Verse 4

Verse 4

Mis sueños cuando apenas muchacho adolescente,

Mis sueños cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,

Fueron el verte un día, joya del mar de oriente,

Secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente,

Sin ceño, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,

My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,

Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,

From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free

No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye. (Derbyshire)

Rizal now presents us with a flashback to the beginning of his love affair with the Patria. The Derbyshire translation however, removes some important contextual information. “My dreams when I was an adolescent boy/My dreams as a vigorous youth” writes Rizal in Spanish. Why does he specifically mention adolescence? It is a nod towards a man who, probably more than any other, sparked Rizal’s nationalism, the martyred Fr. Burgos who was executed when Rizal was almost 11 and, therefore, approaching adolescence.

Burgos was a friend of Rizal’s elder brother, Paciano, who infact was living with the priest in 1872, the year of his execution. It is to Burgos that Rizal refers in Noli Me Tangere as Ibarra passes the killing field of Bagumbayan: “He thought on the man who had opened the eyes of his intelligence and made him understand what was good and what was just”.

In a letter to Mariano Ponce in 1889, Rizal traced the emergence of nationalism to the deaths of Burgos and explains “At the sight of those injustices and cruelties, though still a child, my imagination awoke, and I swore that I would dedicate myself to avenge one day so many victims…”

Adolescence, the limbo between childhood and adulthood, is the time of sexual awakening and the attitudes and relationships of this period often become the templates for those of the rest of our lives. It was the moment of Rizal’s first crush, on a 14 year old colegiala called Segunda Katigbak at the still-extant Concordia College. His description of that relationship is revealing.

They were obviously attracted to each other yet, in the Guerro translation of his Memorias he writes: “I adopted a course of silence, determined that until I should see greater proofs of sympathy between us, I would not subject myself to her yoke, or tell her that I love her.” Later, in words of heartbreak he says: “Ended at an early hour, my first love!… My illusions will return, yes, but indifferent, uncertain, ready for the first betrayal on the path of love”

From then on Rizal shows a reluctance to dive into the pool of love wholeheartedly and his fear of betrayal survived into his last relationship, with Josephine Bracken.

Of Segunda, Rizal says “I realized that she was the woman who satisfied completely the yearning of my heart, and I told myself that I had lost her”.

It is legitimate to wonder whether the imagery of the redeemed, honorable Partia with dark eyes and head held high is an echo of Segunda Katigbak, Rizal’s first love.

In this verse Rizal tells us when and by whom his love for the Patria was ignited, when he began to dream of Patria with her dark eyes dry and her head held high and proud, without sorrow or shame. Here we have Rizal’s personification of the Patria as a sorrowing, shamed woman to be redeemed.

Yet where does Patria’s shame come from? She has not, by her actions, shamed herself. The answer may have its inspiration close to Rizal’s own home: His mother was illegitimate at a time when social mores held illegitimacy itself to be a cause of shame, a background shared by his heroine, Maria Clara. Rizal adored his mother yet, like Patria, she was tainted by the circumstances of her birth, just as the Patria is tainted by the morally illicit complicity between Filipinos and Spaniards. The Patria’s shame can only be redeemed by Filipinos themselves.

Verse  5>

Decoding Mi Ultimo Adios – Verse 3

Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora

Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;

si grana necesitas para teñir tu aurora,

Vierte la sangre mía, derrámala en buen hora

Y dórela un reflejo de su naciente luz.

I die just when I see the dawn break,

Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;

And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,

Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,

To dye with its crimson the waking ray. (Derbyshire)

It was line four of this verse that first brought home the inadequacy of most translations. Rizal talks of his blood being shed “en buen hora”, or, in a literal English translation, at ‘the good hour”. Derbyshire has this as “Pour’d out at need”, a version by Frank Hilario has it as “pour at such beneficial hour,” while Victor Elazio has it a “at a good hour”. A version used in the Sound and Light Presentation in Intramuros has it as ‘in good hour’.

In fact, en buen hora is a term that has equivalents in several Latinate languages, in French it is la bonne heure, but no real equivalent in English and the literal translation “the good hour” does not really represent the same meaning. Thus the Derbyshire, Hilario and Elazio translations (The Intramuros translation is nonsensical) give it the sense of shedding Rizal’s blood at an appropriate time.

The term refers to early dawn, at, and shortly, after sunrise when the air is fresh and clear and the day is new, the precise time, in fact, when he was executed. It’s hardly likely that Rizal would be offering to shed his blood at an opportune moment, as suggested in the translations, if he was already dead, whatever his belief might be in the afterlife, he has already shed it.

The message here is that our lack of familiarity with Rizal’s language necessarily separates us from its meaning. This should be a matter of concern. Verse 3, and its various translations demonstrate why.

Just a verse 2 relates to verse 1 through sacrifice for the redemption of the Patria, verse 3 builds on verse 2 – for Rizal, he is to die as the moment of redemption is at hand.

Here are three translations from those mentioned earlier:

I die just when I see the dawn break,

Through the gloom of night, to herald the day; (Derbyshire)

I die as I see the sky flushes with color
And announces day at last, after a dark night; (Hilario)

And at last, the day breaks clad in a mournful cape (Elazio)

What Rizal actually writes is:

Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora

Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;

While Elizio concatenates the first two lines he retains an significant word which he translates as ‘cloak’ but which can also translate as ‘cowl’ – capuz. Hilario wisely retains the reference to colour which is lost in the Derbyshire translation. Another translation has the phrase “as dawn unfurls its colours’. The significant word is colora but the most significant image is of dawn.

Dawn appears frequently in Rizal’s writings in the context of liberation. In a letter left with a friend in Hong Kong to be published after his death he writes: “I shall die blessing my country and wishing her the dawn of redemption”. Through Padre Florentino in El Filisterismo he says “When the people rise to this height, God provides the weapon, and the idols fall, the tyrants fall like a house of cards, and freedom shines in the first dawn.” (My italics).

That Rizal is using the same image reference in the third verse of Mi Ultimo Adios is certainly not speculation nor over-reading. “I die seeing the dawn colour”, or ‘become coloured’ or “as I see the colours of the dawn’, are not unreasonable paraphrases into English. The colour of dawn, in this imagery is red, the colour of blood, the colour of combat and he sees the dawn of freedom as something imminent.

Other layers of meaning are worth noting. The term ‘colour’ can also refer to a flag. When a ship, or a regiment, go into battle they ‘raise their colours’, their identifying symbol in combat. Rizal has already referred to this combat in verse 2.

When we get to “Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;” Elazio is way off mark except for the reference to the cape. Here the dawn announces or heralds ‘el dia’ through, or beneath, the cowl of gloom or darkness. ‘El dia’ is the day of freedom, the dawn of which has just broken. Implicit in this imagery is the presence of the sun, light, liwanag, against which darkness cannot prevail.

The capuz, cowl or cape, is without question a reference to the friars whom he had criticized, not always fairly, throughout his writings. Hatred of the friars was far from universal outside the Tagalog provinces and Rizal had, as the Brits say, a bone to pick with the Dominicans whom he felt had unfairly evicted the Mercado family, his family, from their property.

Nevertheless, through the 19^th century, as Spain lost the power to administer its colonies it came more and more to depend on the friar orders to impose some form of control. In effect the friars acted as an autonomous arm of government in a form of symbiosis with the Spanish administration. It was not always a comfortable relationship since the friars inevitably represented conservative attitudes that were challenged by Spain’s periodic shift to anti-clerical liberal government. Whatever liberalizing winds came from the peninsular, however, were well-minimised by the time they reached the archipelago.

As independent agents of Spain with tremendous moral force in the Philippines the friars stood in the way of independence. As agents for the conservative mindset they stood in the way of liberalizing the lot of the Filipino.

One should, however, be wary of accepting these perceptions as representing the actual situation, at least outside the Tagalog provinces. In the Cordilleras, and elsewhere, the friars became the protectors of the hillsmen against the depredations of Spanish military personnel, a problem which, when resolved, usually resulted in the hillsmen requesting the removal of the friars in a cycle of dialogue that shows the hillsmen knew well how to work the system.

In Samar, where there were no friar lands, the friars led defensive and offensive against slave raiders with such success that creating an export industry in hemp and coconut oil became viable, whereupon the friars proceeded to provide the wherewithal to develop such industries for the progress of the island.

Till, to Rizal it was the gloomy capuz of the friar orders that prevented progress and liberty.

In the third line and fourth line, Rizal offers his blood to the Patria if she needs it more red for the colours of the day, that she should take it en buen hora, the good hour, the hour of his execution, to match/reflect/dye the naciente luz.

The naciente luz, returns us to the sun as liwanag, the light that leads to that state of grace implied by kalayaan, a state of ease, where there are no slaves or tyrants. This is not merely a physically rising sun but Father Florentino’s first dawn in which the light of freedom shines reflected in Rizal’s blood.

Verse 4 >

Decoding Mi Ultimo Adios, verse 2

Verse II

En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio,

Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar;

El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,

Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,

Lo mismo es si lo piden la patria y el hogar.

On the field of battle, ‘mid the frenzy of fight,

Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;

The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white

Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,

‘Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need. (Derbyshire)

Verse 1 left us with Rizal addressing the reader/Patria from his prison cell and a natural order would have been to follow with Verse 3 as he is taken to his execution to be followed by what is now verse 2. Here, however, he leaps outwards with a broadbrush to encompass past and current struggles rather than bringing focus on his own sacrifice then opening out to include the sacrifice of others. Why?

What Rizal is doing is to give us the foundation to understand the imagery of the third verse and place his death in the context of the ongoing struggle for national liberation. In Verse 1 he describes the Patria he and others are fighting for, in Verse 3 he defines who is being fought against. In Verse 2 he tells us that it doesn’t matter how one struggles, that all struggles, all deaths, are worth it if it is for the good of the country, the nation, the Patria to release that hidden pearl of the Orient from its shell.

This verse also shows that Constantino is in error when he assumes that in repudiating Bonifacio’s uprising Rizal is repudiating the massa who were fighting for liberty. Quite the opposite, Rizal honors them and includes them in the struggle.

While the Derbyshire translation and others generally translate the meaning of the verse correctly it nevertheless raises questions, in particular the use of ‘delirio’ and the imagery of “ciprés, laurel o lirio”.

Rizal uses ‘delirio’ in the first line, which Derbyshire translate as ‘frenzy’ while others have preserved the word, i.e. “deliriously fighting”. It seems a strange word to use, bearing as is does, negative psychiatric overtones of confusion and madness. While it can also mean a frenzied excitement, surely Rizal could have used another Spanish word with a more positive feel than delirium?

Delirium is a condition of the mind and Rizal was familiar with the emerging medical specialty of psychiatry. Indeed, he wrote a treatise on the mangkukulam and psychologically induced illnesses. In his era it was popularly believed that such conditions were due to bewitchment or possession by spirits, a belief not entirely eradicated today, and delirium would have been seen as a condition of bewitchment or possession by an outside force.

Familiar phrases such as ‘deliriously happy’ present a more positive feel but retain the sense of a disconnection of rational thought. It is, perhaps, this usage that Rizal intends but may not be the only intention. As his manifesto, and data for his defense, reveal, there were many fighting in the belief, falsely promoted by Bonifacio, that they had his explicit support. There was, therefore, a disconnect between the reality and their belief, even so, in Rizal’s poem, they were sacrificing for the patria.

The first line references those who were fighting at the time Rizal wrote the poem. The second line, ‘Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar” encompasses those who have, in various ways, selflessly sacrificed their lives in the past. Together, these lines link Rizal’s future sacrifice with the sacrifice of the revolutionaries then ongoing and the sacrifices of the past.

Now Rizal challenges us: “El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,”. The place is not important, he tells us, then gives what seem to be symbols of three places that could mean forest, bush and garden, yet the Cypress is not a particularly Filipino image, laurel, or Bay, is a common herb in cooking, and the lily is usually thought of as a cultivated garden plant. Why not balete, banahaw or Sampaguita?

In mythology, the cypress is associated with Hades, the god of the underworld who, along with others, overthrew the Titans who ruled the universe just as Filipinos were seeking to overthrow the rulers of the Philippines. Rizal was also familiar with Jewish writings, indeed he learnt Hebrew so that he could read them in the original language and may well have been aware of the Jewish concept of an underworld, the place whether the dead were equal. No matter what station or wealth they attained while living, all must each dirt while awaiting redemption.

Might cypress, then, be a reference to the common man, the tao, the masa, who’s heart and minds were as much a place of battle as the fields of Luzon?

Laurel is a cooking ingredient but, more than that, wreaths of laurel were awarded by the Greeks to victors in battles, in sports, in literature, a laurel wreath was the sign of the elite. If cypress represents the common man, then laurel here represents that other battle space for hearts and minds, the elite and the ilustrados.

And the lily, I would suggest, refers to women who are also able to struggle and who themselves are part of the battlespace.

Note that these definitions do not replace the concept of different terrains but are in addition to them, another layer of meaning. Cypress, Laurel and Lily can also be identified with courage, honor and purity, all necessary elements for the redemption of the Filipino and the Patria. Again, these are not mutually excluive identifications and symbols but additional to them.

“Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,” Derbyshire translates cadalso as ‘scaffold’, a structure upon which executions are performed. Others have translated it with more literal correctness as ‘plank’. When someone is to be garroted they are placed astride a plank to with is attached a back-rest through with a large screw passes which is turned by a large crosspiece to snap the victims neck. Performed properly it was a swift death and perhaps seen as ‘humane’. The French guillotine and today’s death by drugs are other examples of the hopeless chase for ‘humane’ executions.

The most famous martyrs were the three priests executed in 1872 following an uprising at the Cavite arsenal in which it was claimed they were complicit. The three, Gomez, Burgos and Zamora had worked for the filipinization of the country’s parishes. Burgos was a friend of Rizal and his brother Paciano and the man whom Rizal credited with opening his eyes and lighting the spark of nationalism. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Rizal’s reference to ‘cruel martyrdom’ is intended to remind the reader of the three priests who deaths were the first stepping stone towards the revolution of 1896.

By the time of Rizal’s execution the garotte had been largely replaced by the firing squad, possibly because the numbers requiring execution were too great to satisfy with the relatively slow method of the garotte.

‘campo abierto’ is self explanatory, the open field of battle. Rizal then inverts the sense order in the last half of the sentence – in combat or cruel martyrdom. Death in battle and death at the hands of the firing squad or by the garotte were equal worthwhile sacrifices when, as his last line says, it serves the Patria and her needs.

Rizal sees the struggle for national liberation as one that can be served on the battlefield, through revolution, or by loving sacrifice for the motherland. It is a struggle in which each person, each individual, has a role to play, man or woman, peasant and elite. The struggle is a continuum for past to present, from Gomes, Burgos and Zamora to the 13 Martyrs and Rizal himself.

More than that, this verse is a call to arms, to sacrifice oneself for the Patria, at a time when Rizal believed that the moment of redemption was at hand, as we shall see in the third verse.

Most importantly, Rizal presents the key to redemption – selfless sacrifice for the Patria.

In verse 1 he has presented the past, verse 2, is the present condition to which the past has led. Verse 3 deals with the immediate future, at least Rizal’s hope for that future.

Verse 3>

Mi Ultimo Adios – verse 1

Verse 1

¡Adiós, Patria adorada, región del sol querida,

Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!

A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,

Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,

También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.

The Derbyshire translation, the earliest but not necessarily, the most accurate has it:

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!,
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost (Derbyshire)

The term ‘Fatherland’ is less popular today, bearing as it does association with the Nazis of WW2 but ‘motherland’, as some translations indeed have it, is more correct because ‘Patria’ is a feminine noun. Some translations use ‘country’ which, while not incorrect does not have the overtones of Patria.

Patria here is a holistic term involving more than physical location and borders, it is everything within it that makes the nation and identifies its people and its values, all those things which are seen as unique to it. Patria is the mother-entity, Inang Bayan, which bore us, gave us birth and nurtured and nursed us into being and to which we owe love and loyalty as we do our own mothers and our adoration, which goes beyond love.

“región del sol querida”, introduces the male principle, the Sun, which sustains and loves the female principle, the Patria. Patria is the Sun’s beloved, its ‘querida’. This un can also be read as liwanag, the enlightenment that leads to redemption and liberty.

Note the singularity of Patria and región. This Patria is not a mere aggregation of people and places but a single, unified whole inherently deserving our love and loyalty.

“Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!” translates easily enough: “Pearl of the Oriente (Eastern) Sea, our lost Eden!” A pearl has beauty and worth but it remains hidden and inaccessible within its shell until we make the effort to seek it out, we must struggle to find it.

The lost Eden harks back to Rizal’s vision of the untainted pre-Hispanic Philippines, an imaginary time of purity and innocence. Yet there is more: in the biblical story, the serpent persuades Eve to surrender her innocence and she then persuades Adam to surrender his and as a result God expels them from the Garden of Eden. The Serpent and Eve echo the famous Blood Compact of Sikatuna and a variety of treaties and alliances through which the Spanish ‘seduced’ the Filipinos and the Filipinos surrendered their innocence and thereby lost their Eden.

Thus, the pearl, the thing of beauty and worth, the Eden, is shuttered and inaccessible within its shell and we must struggle to find the pearl and make it ours.

“A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,” here I have to proceed cautiously. The readings I have for this line differ significantly from virtually every other translation: “I will give you happiness in your sad life” rather than “Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best” in the Derbyshire translation but most others seem to follow a similar line. Rizal now introduces himself as an actor in the poem, one who is offering happiness to the Patria’s sad life.

The penultimate line – “Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,” – is translated in Derbyshire, and in sense elsewhere, as “And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest…” Yet the Spanish has the clear sense of “Outside, it is brighter, fresher, more flowery (or, to coin a word perhaps, flower-ful)”. This reading places Rizal in his location: a dark prison cell away from the brightness, freshness and the flowers. It also places the reader on the outside of the cell, as if to say ‘look around you, this is what this is about’.

In the final line of the verse, Rizal, having introduced himself and his location and located the reader on the outside, now addresses the reader directly as an individual – “También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien” – “Also for you I gave it, I gave to for your good”. He has changed focus from the whole of the Patria to the single individual reader, for whom he is also giving his life. Rizal is not seeking sympathy or laying a guilt-trip on the reader (i.e. I gave for your sake), but emphasizing that it is for the reader’s go, something that the reader should learn from and from which he or she should benefit.

It can be argued that Rizal’s use of the familiar ‘ti’ rather than ‘usted’ identifies his imaginary audience solely as the Patria, Inang Bayan, and not the reader as an individual yet it is not necessarily an exclusive identification. The Patria is inclusive, it, she, is the sum of all things Filipino including its people and their aspirations so in addressing th Patria, Rizal is also addressing Filipinos as a people through the reader.

This first verse begins an Eden/Fall/Redemption cycle of the kind Rizal also uses in his introduction to the De Morga. Filipinos have lost their Eden, they have lost the state of grace and innocence. How, then, is redemption achieved? Rizal tells us in his second verse.

Verse 2