To claim an intention

(Address given as guest of honor and speaker at the 56th Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, on Sept. 1, at the Grand Ballroom of Dusit Hotel Nikko, Makati City.)

Tonight, on this annual occasion sponsored so wisely and generously by the Carlos Palanca Foundation, we are all privileged to have a good number of our writers and their best works being acclaimed and applauded – and we, readers and writers who are here tonight may well wonder about the enormity of literary expertise and craftsmanship and long earnest labor that must have gone into the performing of these chosen works. And, we may well speculate, too, on the outstanding feature that always marks the awarded writer’s work, for it’s the sure sign that a critical imagination has motivated the creative skill and fresh insights and the original inventiveness.

This is a night focused on literature and specifically, on showing that good critical judging had been at work; so allow me to mention just an idea or two about good literary writing and critical judging.

It is obvious that apart from the craftsmanship and artistic execution of a creative work, an even more crucial demand is raised by the critic – and especially as preconsidered by the writer-author himself. For the question is asked:

What is the significance of this awarded piece of work, what meaningful idea or concern is generated as the fundamental offering of this work?

In other words, the final justifying, it would seem, veers from the be-all and primacy of craftsmanship, and centers on the creative work’s substance. It’s obvious that fine craftsmanship and thin substance is actually much ado about nothing.

Clearly, then, the writer writes with a well-defined intention in mind for his work. Sometimes, this is dubbed as "author’s intention," and it is often an intricate matter even for the author to define. But defined the intention must be; otherwise in the work the (all-paramount!) substance is in trouble.

In this connection a certain writer years ago at a Dumaguete National Writers Workshop was bewailing his difficulty with a story he had barely started to write, and wanted some advice. Among other things, I asked him about the story’s "author’s intention": "What specific intention do you have in mind for this work?"

The writer’s reply was prompt. "To win the Palanca award!"

And indeed, the creative work’s projected intention – whatever it be – ultimately reveals the writer’s purpose for being a writer, and that this purpose links him to his fellow-being and to the close community, and thence to the larger society – and in the end defines exactly what he by his writings renders in comprising the very stronghold of literature itself.

This is to say that by the fact of being a writer he is committed to the larger view, the integrated view of mankind and the world of mankind. And soon enough he realizes that the conscientious writer’s great task is to preserve for the human being his finest and best self.

For in a world being rapidly oriented mainly toward technological-mechanical perfection, the writer is the consummate artist capturing us, creatures mystical and spiritual as we are, capturing and shaping into startling and disparate forms as only his art and his language devise.

Further, by his link to society he is pledged to envision beyond the usual envisioning, beyond the usual formulating of an exemplary society in an exemplary world, and rather, to affirm the picture of an even more splendid structure of society, a kind of beau monde inhabited properly enough by redirected and transcendent people – an extremely rash and incredibly idealistic daydreaming picture, maybe, but in the creating of it, every serious writer is a perfect artist, every writer flaunts an unwavering pen.

This stress on transcendence is underlined by the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche in that memorable work, The Birth of Tragedy, where he views the highest forms of art as the affirmation of life in the face of its terrors. Indeed, speaking as a writer, I venture to assert that all versifying and poetizing is the interpretation of man’s most profound illusions of a perfect world.

Finally, the writer is no esoteric being. His writing has proved to be an effective medium where the union and understanding between man and man, and man and self is continually affirmed and reaffirmed.

It does seem that this purpose, this reaching out is a noble commitment and should exalt the conscientious writer and his pen.

If so, it is very appropriate that we do commend the chosen writers and their chosen works tonight… And now, speaking for the country’s writers, both the young and the grizzled among us, we give all our thanks to the Palanca family for this proud occasion of the year for literature. And thank you all for listening to me.