Abstract
This chapter is an introduction to and a liberal interpretation of Rizal’s first novel, Noli Me Tangere. It provides an overview of Rizal as a novelist, explains Rizal’s notion of audience, and moves to a discussion of the Noli’s themes. In the novel, Rizal uses the skills of a journalist to reproduce nineteenth-century Philippine society with fidelity. He then uses this setting to test the viability of liberal reformism in the country. The novel’s main character, the creole/mestizo Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, tries to build a progressive school in the European mold. For his efforts, the friars brand him a subversive and frame him for inciting rebellion. Ibarra’s failure stems not only from his naiveté but also from his misunderstanding of how liberalism should be cultivated in the colony.
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Notes
- 1.
Based on the books that Rizal left with Jose Ma. Basa in Hong Kong, we know that his library contained many French titles: works by Honore de Balzac, Alexander Dumas, Pierre Jean de Beranger, Moliere, Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, and Emile Zola (Ocampo 2012, 75).
- 2.
That honor belongs to the 1885 novel Ninay , written by Pedro Paterno.
- 3.
One must also consider the possibility that Rizal , who acknowledged the ethno-linguistic diversity of the Philippines, was ambivalent about such outright assertions of Tagalog supremacy. See Ocampo (2012, 5–8) for an account of how a poem falsely attributed to Rizal has been used to promote Tagalog language supremacy.
- 4.
Hau (2017, 164) has recently shown that Rizal’s metaphor mixes two ancient practices. The Greeks spent the night in front of the temple, hoping for the gods or the priests to discover a remedy. The Babylonians, on the other hand, may have placed sick people in public squares, hoping for passersby to suggest cures.
- 5.
The phrasing of the line precludes exact dating. Elias says that it will be 15 years “pronto.” Pronto could mean a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years. Whatever the case, we can be sure that the Noli occurred in the past, since 1887, the date of the novel’s publication, is after 15 years from the foundation of the Civil Guard. I thank Carol Hau for the back-and-forth email discussion on the dating of Noli me Tangere .
- 6.
His middle name is the Magsalin—a Tagalog word for pouring into another receptacle. It also means to translate.
- 7.
It is partly the novel’s admiration for German education that gave critics ammunition to describe the novel as “protestant” and “unpatriotic” to Spain.
- 8.
The 1998 blockbuster-style film Jose Riza l (still the mostly widely seen cinematic biography of Rizal) asserts that Rizal gave Ibarra his eyes, so that they see the same things.
- 9.
Translation mine.
- 10.
During the height of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, Elias became a revolutionary symbol for many Maoist activists. My own parents, who were then members of the Communist Party, named me Lisandro Elias.
- 11.
Translation from Spanish mine.
- 12.
It is this same line that allows us to date the timeline of Noli Me Tangere to roughly 1883.
- 13.
His maternal grandfather, a bookkeeper, was framed for arson, which led to the family’s penury. To raise their son (Elias’s father), Elias’s grandmother was forced into prostitution. Years later, Elias’s father falls in love with a wealthy woman, and they have two children, Elias and his sister. But when his history is revealed, Elias’s father goes to prison. Elias and his sister grow up believing that their father is dead. Their father, however, was a servant in their household—one they had mistreated multiple times. When Elias discovers his true identity, he abandons his wealth. The tragedy of this story becomes more pronounced when Elias discovers that it was Ibarra’s great-grandfather who accused his grandfather of crime, thereby leading to the family’s ruin.
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Claudio, L.E. (2019). Noli me Tangere and the Failure of Transplanted Liberalism. In: Jose Rizal. Global Political Thinkers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01316-5_3
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