It is easier for us, than for the optimistic generation of the 1910s and 1920s, to believe in the terrors of the police state, the blunders and excesses of governments with the best will in the would.Īt the same time our generation of Filipinos do not know the Philippines and the Spain of Rizal's time. Perhaps our generation of Filipinos, who have under-gone the Japanese occupation and are subjected on all sides to the massive pressures of modern ideologies, can best understand the problems of Rizal as a dissenter in a conformist society, as a peace-loving man in an age of violence, as a patriot who must lead the way out of confusion.
He is now as controversia) as when he was condemned as a subversive agitator in the pay of foreign interests, a corrupter of morals, a dissident from the established order. On the other hand, he is practically a stranger to the Filipinos of our times, a century after his birth, and we can look at him with a certain freshness. This is a pity because one cannot take a really objective view of the national hero. It was then I discovered that the way he died is not so important as the way he lived, and, since his life was essentially an apostleship, not so important as what he thought and wrote.Īlmost all the biographies of Rizal, including this one, are written for Filipinos. When I was commissioned by a London publisher to translate his two novels and to provide an introduction, I had perforce to write a brief account of his life.
Then I translated his school journal and his poems as a literary exercise. I read his two novels in Spanish when I was still quite young, only half understanding them, and half secretly because my pious mother feared they would make me "lose my faith".
In school I learned only that he had died for our country, shot by the Spaniards.
Like most Filipinos I was told about Rizal as a child, and to me, like to most, he remained only a name.
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