Quartet on Balagtas Day

Once summer vacation is over, two brothers will enter sophomore year at Ateneo High School. They’ve been warned of how the "killer class" will entail the year-long conduct of gaining awareness, understanding and appreciation of Florante at Laura. Now that draws us into the picture, since the literary work is in verse, and the teens who shudder at the thought of having to enter the putative torture chamber of 19th-century narrative poetry in Tagalog happen to be our sons.

In such worrisome context did we agree to meet with the imminently great literary artist Rio Alma (a.k.a. Virgilio Almario), premier poet in Filipino, at the lobby of the Manila Hotel on the second day of April.

That Wednesday was Balagtas Day. The Samahang Balagtas, established in 1958, would be honoring Francisco Baltazar, or Francisco Balagtas as some research puts it, with a program at the historic hotel’s Centennial Hall. In commemoration of the 215th birth anniversary of the national poet, the literary rite would feature the first in an intended annual lecture series in his honor.

Rio Almario would in fact introduce the distinguished speaker awarded the privilege of delivering the first lecture: Dr. Adrian E. Cristobal. The prospect of getting within range of an impishly golden shower of wit and insight from the eminent raconteur, er, lecturer, served as another incentive for us to devote the afternoon to being a listener.

Well, we were also assured of a free lunch. We met with Mr. Almario at high noon, a couple of hours before the start of the program. Our presumption happily turned correct when Rio did see fit to play the host in our brief reunion with a friend visiting from Belgium.

Professor Geert Bouckaert of the University of Leuven had treated us to a memorable meal of European exotica – deer, pheasant, terrine of wild boar, washed down with three different yet equally superb Belgian beers – at The Professors’ Club in the Grand Beguinage or something like Old Town in charming Leuven. That was in November of 2001, when together with fellow-poet Dr. Benilda Santos we had lectured and read poetry in some lucky Euro cities.

Now was our chance to return the favor. Prof. Bouckaert had swung by for a couple of nights to see his friend, poet Jovi Miroy of Ateneo, who had spent long months of scholarship in Belgium. Geert’s main agenda in our neck of the academic woods was to deliver a lecture at a poli-sci confab in Hong Kong. But then came SARS, so the event was cancelled, giving Geert more time in Manila.

It proved propitious that the day we could all meet happened to be Balagtas Day. Geert’s week in Asia would not go to waste after all; instead of giving his own talk, he could sit in and listen to Dr Cristobal’s lecture in English on our foremost vintage poet in Filipino. Er, Tagalog. That is, written in his time the way some Capampangans still do it – replete with c’s for k’s. and qui’s for ki’s.

We had to brief Prof. Bouckaert over lunch of quilawin, care-care’t bagoong, bistec Tagalog, mangga’t macapuno at Café Ylang-ylang. The meal was washed down with the best brew we could offer: San Miguel Premium, which Geert happily toasted with and thumbed up.

Happily, too, that day saw a column by Ambeth Ocampo on Balagtas. We brought the clipping and showed it to the professor. Thus did he first make our national poet’s acquaintance. Now it would be up to Adrian to extend everyone’s enlightenment.

The crowd at the Centennial Hall included political, media, and academic luminaries: Senator Aquilino Pimentel, DFA Secretary Blas Ople, The Manila Times owner Dante Ang, former Tourism Secretary Gemma Cruz Araneta, UST Prof. Jose David Lapuz, DFA assistant secretary Jaime Yambao who regaled everyone with a native aria, our favorite astrologer Zenaida Seva-Ong, our favorite publisher Karina Bolasco, our favorite historian Ambeth Ocampo, our favorite poets Teo Antonio and Vim Carmelo Nadera, and the entire Cristobal family, including our favorite daughter Celina.

Monsignor Sabino Vengco, Jr. of the Loyola House of Studies delivered the invocation. Rep. Joaquin M. Chipeco, Samahang Balagtas Vice President, gave the opening remarks. Then it was Professor Almario’s turn to wield Filipino the best way he knew how in introducing the special guest speaker.

Adrian E. Cristobal began his lecture: "In our Albania of anomalies, nothing can be more anomalous than to get someone like me to inaugurate the Balagtas lecture series. This came about, according to one of our distinguished Balagtas scholars, Virgilio Almario, simply because I had the dubious inspiration of proposing this series to our Samahang Balagtas, and on this basis, Secretary Blas F. Ople, whose coercive powers at making idle people like me work their tails off, decreed that I start off the lectures. I am tempted to say that this is my punishment for shooting my mouth off, though I can assure you that what I have to say will probably be more of a punishment to you, who are gathered here this afternoon, stuck on your seats, as I wriggle my way out of wrestling with Francisco Balagtas."

That was the lecture title, by the way: "Wrestling with Balagtas." Our thoughts couldn’t help but turn once more to the dim prospects facing our sons come June onwards. It was a good thing that from the corner of our eye we glimpsed a bright ray of hope other than the appreciative gleam in Prof. Bouckaert’s visage, turned as it was toward the dashing figure behind the lectern onstage. It was obvious he was enjoying Adrian.

In his hands, too, we espied a large book. He had been gifted an advance copy of Balagtas’ Florante at Laura, that is, its latest edition, "Handog sa Bayan ni Senador Blas F. Ople," with Virgilio S. Almario as editor, and published by the Institute for Public Policy.

Dr. Cristobal went on: "I call the exercise ‘wrestling’ for several reasons. In the first place, it is a real trial to say something brilliant about our great epic poet, since brilliance and I are seldom, if at all, on speaking terms…"

We asked Geert if we could take a look at the book that had been handed him somewhat surreptitiously, as he was the only one on our table who had a copy. Thus did we browse through Ople and Almario and Balagtas while listening to the rest of Cristobal.

The experience, helped along by fine brewed coffee, was not unlike being mysteriously, mystically, delivered foursquare on a classically proportioned plaza where a plaque quoted "a tetragrammaton of sweetness" – lines from an obscure poet who is said to have cherished pushing the envelope when it came to the spontaneous simultaneity of enlightenment.

Ople: "Dinadangal natin si Rizal bilang dakilang manunulat ngunit si Balagtas ang kaisa-isang Filipinong pinagpugayan ni Rizal bilang dakilang makata."

Almario: "Ni wala tayong retrato ni Balagtas. At ni walang kopya ng Florante at Laura na limbag noong ika-19 dantaon ang ating mga pambansang sinupan at aklatan."

Balagtas: "Cong pag saulang cong basahin sa isip/ ang nangacaraang arao ng pag-ibig,/ may mahahaguilap cayang natititic/ liban na cay Celiang namugad sa dibdib?"

Cristobal: "…I am but a wanderer in the dark and fearful forest of Balagtas’ epic, having learned about it in my high school days, with but a single verse lodged in memory. It runs like this, as some of you might recall: ‘Ang laki sa layaw, karaniwa’y hubad, walang karsonsilyo’t labas ang bayag.’ I will not patronize a great poet by translating his lines in English. Let those who can’t read Tagalog go to E. San Juan’s English translation and there swim in the abstruse explications that sap the juice out of Balagtas’ substance, although he aimed to locate our poet in the Western tradition. That is an awkward sentence, proving how confusing it is to have someone who writes primarily in English (though doing some Tagalog) discourse on Balagtas."

Ople: "…Sa edisyong ito, muli naming inihaharap ang orihinal at matandang wika ni Balagtas upang muli nating mapaglimian. Kaagapay nito ang bersiyong nasa modernisadong baybay at may anotasyon na isinagawa ng makatang iskolar na si Virgilio S. Almario. Isang paraan din ng pagtulong ang edisyong ito tungo sa paglinaw ng mga salungatang idinulot ng marami’t sari-saring limbag ng Florante at Laura."

Almario: "Sa kasalukuyan, hitik ang estante ng mga sangay ng National Book Store sa mga mumurahing edisyong komersiyal ngunit nagpapanggap na edisyong pampaaralan sa pamamagitan ng tinatawag na ‘tulong sa mag-aaral’ o ‘tulong sa mga guro.’ Iang paglilinlang itong natutuhang pagkakitaan ng mga nagkukunwang editor o kritiko na ni hindi nakasilip ng edisyong bago magsiglo 20 ng awit ni Balagtas."

Balagtas: "Hanggang dito ako O nanasang pantas,/ sa kay Sigesmundo’y huwag ding matulad,/ sa gayong katamis wikang masasarap/ ay sa kababago ng tula’y umalat."

Cristobal: "We have poets who thunder, but most poets sigh in the face of the world’s plunge into folly. Even revolutionary poets find themselves, in the end, begging for love to prevail…"

At this point we ourselves sigh, and motion a waiter for another cuppa’ java. We realize that we are receiving an education, and that we have to pass this on to our kids. We will have to wrestle with Balagtas ourselves, through the long hot summer. Until the rains come, as a poet’s sigh.

Happily, on Balagtas Day we ourselves receive a copy of the new edition, and are told by the giver that yet another annotated edition of Florante at Laura should be out of the press soon. We thank the scholar-editor-poet Rio, who’s on quite a roll, for the copy at hand and the future one. Armed to the teeth shall we battle lions and chains of distant mythic empires when we go through Balagtas’ long song with our short-summer sons. Then perhaps we can repeat Adrian’s final line at the end of our tedious if illuminating struggle: "I am properly exhausted, and I hope you are too."