Essential anthologies

Launched last Saturday at PowerBooks Makati was The Essential Arcellana, edited by Alberto S. Florentino, and published by De La Salle University Press, Inc. Years in the making – as it is often said, but which actuallly applies to the gestation this book went through – the personal anthology celebrates the trans-genre works of our late beloved National Artist for Literature. That it finally came out barely a year after his demise may be said to be timely – a fortuitous reminder that there but for the grace of good deeds go the words that immortalize such a dear one as Francisco Arcellana. But then let Bert tell you all about it himself, through his own daily e-mail output.

Oh, so the reason we haven’t been seeing Bert’s prodigious mail of late is because he’s in town, back from New York. He is home himself, finally, for this launch. Well, as we write this, the event is still a day off. A good thing the NA’s son, our buddy Juaniyo, already provided us a copy.

Bert writes for the Intro: "I met Francisco Arcellana some 50 years ago when I attended the first Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature awarding ceremonies where he won the prize for his short story, ‘The Flowers of May.’ At that time, 1951, he had not published a book under his name; not a sheaf of poems by the poet; not a trilogy of stories by the short story writer; not a pamphlet of literary essays or criticism by the literary historian or chronicler.

"I published Arcellana’s first collection, the first of 15 books by some of the country’s best writers during the time. In the end (somewhere in the 1980s), I had published 21 titles by six or seven authors who, 10 or more years later, would be proclaimed National Artist for Literature, the highest literary recognition from the government and the incumbent President.

"Selected Stories by Francisco Arcellana, the fourth title in my Peso Book series, was printed on the obverse and reverse pages of only two sheets of bookpaper on a flatbed letterpress in the University of the Philippines Printery in the basement of the UP Library. The two pages were fed by hand into the machine and manually folded, by mostly women printery workers, four times to make two 32-page signatures, in a 5" by 7" format, saddle-stitched and covered with a heavier stock of white board paper…"

That was over half-a-century ago. My, how time and technology fly.

Each title in Bert’s now-legendary (and highly collectible) Peso Book series cost only P500, with the initial funding of P400 provided by the painter Fenando Zobel de Ayala, Purita Kalaw Ledesma and Brigido Lobrin. Franz was about to change his mind about this first book, wishing to write new, unpublished stories for it. But Bert pre-empted any procrastination by rushing through the printing in two weeks, having secured an arrangement with Bookmark for the financing and distribution of other titles.

Bert goes on (further down in his Intro): "The peso books were printed at a cost of 33 centavos each and priced to sell at one peso, with a royalty of ten centavos to the author and the rest (57 centavos) to the financier, distributor and retailer. Somehow I forgot to pay myself through the 75 titles and two decades."

Mr. Florentino, the dramatist who also pioneered in the presentation of adapted plays and stories for the seminal Balintataw weekly series on television (together with Cecile Guidote Alvarez), ought to be held up as a hero of an impresario. At the eventual expense of his own literature, indefatigably did the Peso Book conceptualizer, organizer and publisher notch many favors for the cause of Filipino authors.

Decades later, Bert submitted the manuscript for The Essential Arcellana to Dr. Isagani Cruz of DLSU. And now it’s come to light, as a slim but handsome 162-page volume that offers Franz’s classic short fiction (nine stories: "Trilogy of the Turtles," "A Marriage Was Made," "The Mats," "Christmas Gift," "How to Read," "The Flowers of May," "The Yellow Shawl," "Divide by Two," and "About the House"); only two poems, the rest having been collected in The Francisco Arcellana Sampler published by the U.P. Press in 1989, but which are valuable if only for this fragment from "Before Tertullian, After Him": "It’s the body which does the dirty work/ and the Soul which takes the rap// It is the body which plays the mastermind/ and the Soul that plays the sap// For the Soul is ever the dupe of the body/ and life is the body taking the Soul for a ride…" (take that, special friend!); and 10 essays and column pieces, most noteworthy of which are "With Words: Letter to the Poet," "The Filipino Writer and Political Action," "The Carabao with Wings: A Study of Filipino Poetry in English," and "The Pride of Fiction."

That last essay we recall, with pride, having listened to him read, live, at the St. Paul’s College auditorium in 1969, during the Eighth National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete. And less than a couple of years ago we asked him about it for a videodocu we were doing in collaboration with scriptwriter Juaning for an NCCA-CCP project series. As they were wont to, Franz’s eyes still twinkled at the memory of what he had written regarding that pride:

"The truth that otherwise we cannot stand, the reality that we cannot bear to see, our truth and our reality, are made bearable to us in fiction – we dare look without fear of petrifaction.

"The highest cannot be spoken, Goethe says. But, he goes on to say, as if to recover from the admission of weakness, as if to compensate for the inadequacy, it can be acted. And the disability is cancelled.

"Fiction is not just a speaking of the highest, the truth, reality when it is at its best as in Dostoevsky: It is an acting of this.

"Fiction is Act, then – than which nothing is more true, more real, more irreversible. When Dylan Thomas was dying in that hospital in Greenwich Village where he died, the fact of his dying did not become believable to those who kept vigil for him until the doctors’ bulletin said: Prognosis negative, condition irreversible.

"It was also Thomas who defined a poem as an addition to reality, a poem as a created thing, an achieved thing, a poem as real. Well, fiction is not just an addition to reality, it is reality.

"It is not just a speaking with the tongues of men and angels or the sounding of brass or the tinkling of cymbals. It is not even the gift of prophecy that understands all mysteries and all knowledge which it may well be. It is not the removing of mountains or the moving of earth. It is not the giving of one’s goods to feed the poor or one’s body to be burned.

"It is becoming a man and putting way childish things; it is seeing through a glass darkly but then, face to face; it is knowing in part since we can only know in part and prophecy in part; it is knowing even as also we are known.

"That is the pride of fiction – and it is that that jet-propels the fiction writer."

In "The Filipino Writer and Political Action,"Franz details his participation in a national writers’ conference held in Baguio City in 1959, under the auspices of the Philippine Center of PEN International. He demurs from signing resolutions that now-DFA Secretary Blas F. Ople had drafted, and which Adrian Cristobal, "one of the conference editors and rapporteurs," and "not only a fellow-writer but also a good friend," had approached him with, on the train to Damortis.

So elegantly and forcefully does Franz posit the following:

"The only political action possible for the writer is to remember. He must remember or at least he must not forget that to write is not an easy thing. He must remember that he is first a human being before he is a national. He must not for a moment forget that writers, more than any other people, are enchantment-prone. He must be strong enough to admit that writers have been, before him, during his time, and not unlikely after him, self-deceived… He should have pride of profession, if not the guild sense, pride of craft. He should be strong enough not to surrender his essential solitariness. He should be able to sustain remembrance. He must not forget. He should remember long. The longer he remembers the better chances he has for survival. For we live only in the minds of the people who love us.

"It is when love goes that extinction becomes possible. Writers should band together to be strong – but to be strong for their own sweet sakes…

"Writers work alone; but they also work together – but of course only when they are working truly. Writers can be stronger than they are if they recognize this first fact: That they must be conscious of themselves not only as writers working alone separately but as writers working alone but working together. This is to say that the first loyalty of the writer should be to his craft, that his political action if not to write should be directed towards making it more possible for writing.

"Not program but people; not theses but human beings; to work only for the good of their sweet sakes – this should be good enough basis for political action for the Filipino writer."

And that, essentially, is Franz Arcellana. We may not agree with him, you may not agree with him; but I do, for he was a thinking writer’s writer, and a darned honest and caring one – memorious and songful as sheer quintessence.

Another personal anthology was launched last Thursday at DLSU-Taft’s Ariston Estrada Seminar Room, by Anvil Publishing, Inc. in cooperation with the De La Salle University Department of Literature. This was Testament and Other Stories by Katrina Tuvera. And knowing how this young lady writes quality fiction, we urge you to pick up a copy.

Perhaps we shouldn’t even mention that the author is the daughter of the notable Kerima Polotan (Tuvera). But then the genetic strength shows, so unmistakably. Her style is far different from her mother’s; yet in both there is that pride and excellence of craft that Franz invokes and extols. We are glad to note that Katrina’s seeming silence these past few years has not been spent merely in political action in the home, that indeed, she had been writing, pursuing her birthright and testament, and that now she offers a collection of fiction that should inspire others of her generation.

Three other recent anthologies deserve to be cited here. The first is The Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction 2001, with Gémino H. Abad and Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo as Editors, published by the University of the Philippines Press. It builds on the tradition started by the UP Creative Writing Center, now the Institute of Creative Writing, of putting together what the volume editors deemed to have been the most outstanding poetry and short fiction published within a given year.

The series entries are sometimes delayed, but with the release of this latest title late last year, catching up on the ideal timetable should turn into less of a challenge.

The delay is understandable. It is no joke to collate and pore over a year’s literary output, and to make a selection. The 2001 collection introduces fresh voices, among these Raymond Magno Garlitos, Mookie Katigbak, Arvin A. Mangohig, Ericka Pazcoguin, Danilo Francisco Reyes, Edgar Calabia Samar and Charlie Samuya Veric for poetry, and Cyan Abad, S.B. Alojamiento, Celeste Flores, Maria L.M. Fres-Felix, Joe Bert G. Lazarte, Aleah Taboclaon and April Timbol Yap for fiction. Among the familiar bylines are five of the freshest and best women fictionists we have: Reine Arcache Melvin, Merlinda Bobis, Lakambini Sitoy, Menchu Aquino Sarmiento and Socorro Villanueva.

Then there’s Tibuk-Tibok: Festival Anthology of Young Filipino Writers, edited by Francis Tanglao-Aguas and Niccolo Rocamora Vitug, published by Tibuk-Tibok Publications. This Ateneo-based effort was launched a fortnight ago at the ADMU Fine Arts Theater. Mr. Tanglao-Aguas, a Palanca prizewinner for drama, heads the fine arts program at Ateneo, while Vitug is a former student of ours in our fiction, poetry and critical writing classes. The contributors for this bilingual collection of poetry, stories and plays include Patrick Bilog, Kelvin Amador Cabrera, Jenillee Chuaunsu, Micheele Camille Correa, Anna Veronica Lacson, Bettina Patricia R. Palileo, Valerie Ria Rivera, Sara Zoe Sangco, Vitug, and Dr. Rofel G. Brion, with an intro in Filipino by Tanglao-Aguas.

Co-editor Vitug writes: "We in Tibuk-Tibok Publications envision to produce quality literary titles which present the thoughts, sentiments, and expressions of today’s youth. We believe that creating literature is an act of writing the self, and that the collective literature of our generation is the pulsation of the great unseen Heart of us all."

We can only wish for pulsing success in this endeavor.

And lastly, we have in our hands, courtesy of Marra PL Lanot, a rather curious anthology of which only this single copy exists, at least here in Manila for the nonce.

Lo Ultimo de Filipinas: Antologia Poetica, translated and edited by Jaime B. Rosa (Huerga y Fierro Editores, 2001) is all of 192 pages and features translations into Spanish of contemporary Philippine poems, in both Filipino and English.

The poets include, in order of appearance, Nick Joaquin (who could and should have done his own translations), Ramon C. Sunico, Ricardo M. de Hungria (!), Maria Luisa A. Cariño (should have been Luisa Igloria, her current legal and pen name), Címino A Abad (!) (read: Gémino), Alfred A. Yuson, Marjorie M. Evasco, Herminio S. Beltran, Jr., Erwin E. Castillo, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, Eric Gamalinda, Marra Pl. Lanot, Virgilio S, Almario ("Traduccion del tagalog: Salvador Malig" - as are all the works of the following poets), Benilda S. Santos, Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Joi Barrios, Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo, Rogelio G. Mangahas and Jose F. Lacaba, plus some Filipino poets who happen to be academically based in Madrid, or have some relations with the Spanish cultural community in Manila. Many of the poems in English are translated by Ellyde Maestre.

Marra tells us that the idea for such an anthology was first broached to her by Señor Felix Blanco, the former director of Instituto Cervantes. He sought publication for such a collection in Madrid, until he came upon Jaime Rosa, "who used his own money to publish the book."

Marra informed the gentlemen of several typos in the galley proofs sent her, but unfortunately the book, or its first edition anyway, had already been printed, with a 2001 year of copyright. She was assured however that corrections would be made.

There was an attempt to have the anthology launched in time for Christmas last, with our President in attendance. Now Marra and I will try to convince Mr. Rosa to course proceedings through Instituto Cervantes, if only to have the local contributors receive their allotted copies, if not have a launch here in Manila.