It’s been 10 years since the death of Franz Arcellana, who was named National Artist for Literature in 1990 by President Cory Aquino. Coincidentally, both died on the same date, Aug. 1, although seven years apart.
CCP artistic director Cris Millado had been wanting to put up a tribute of sorts since last year, during the 95th birthday of the late writer, but somehow things never did get past the planning stage. Now, a decade since the death and in time for the 96th birthday in September, the best we can do is this patchwork memento, culled from essays by Arcellana’s kumpadre Nick Joaquin, his friend Greg Brillantes, and student Erwin Castillo.
In Joaquin’s essay “Franz the Griffin” (Midweek magazine, March 21, 1990), his kumpadre’s works are compared to Portnoy’s Complaint, Ragtime, and Waiting for Godot.
“So singular are all these works the great marvel about them is how their authors thought them up. Compared to the general literary fauna, they are griffin.
“In Philippine writing the example that pronto comes to mind is Francisco Arcellana’s ‘The Mats.’ It’s about a father who buys sleeping mats for members of his family.
“What’s so odd about that?
“Well, he has bought mats for both the living and the dead. And what’s so frightening is the anger with which he distributes the mats for the dead an anger springing ‘from a deep, grudgingly silent, long-bewildered sorrow.’
“Ivan Karamazov said he wanted to return his ‘entrance ticket’ to God because he could not accept a world where God allowed little children to suffer.
“The mats in the Arcellana story are the ‘entrance ticket’ the father is returning.”
Brillantes, in his essay “Arcellana’s Planet” (Midweek magazine, May 16, 1990), writes about both “The Mats” and “The Flowers of May.”
“The two stories have appeared in many an anthology here and abroad, and deservedly so, for they are, besides being vintage Arcellana, among the finest of the genre, in any language, since a 19th century Russian doctor named Anton Chekhov first contemplated the secret murmurs of the heart. Both pieces… celebrate the power and endurance of love’s memory in the contest with death and desolation each a cry, as Frank O’Connor has defined the short story, in the face of human destiny, but muted, controlled, and by that token all the more unforgettable.
“The best of Arcellana’s stories are variations on the theme of memory: to remember is to sing, or to utter that cry of fierce yet calming protest into the void, and survive. To remember is also the ‘only political action possible for the writer,’ as Arcellana remarks in an essay on the literary artist and political engagement: ‘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 know, with humility, that his grasp of reality is not second to the scientist’s or the politician’s. He should not relinquish the primacy of his mind… He should not forget. He should remember long…’ And finally: ‘the first loyalty of the writer should be to his craft, his political action if not to write should be directed towards making it more possible for writing’ which task in the truest ultimate sense Rizal made his own, as have writers like Kundera and Havel, Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn, in our time.”
Back to Nick: “Franz re-read is Franz beheld as perhaps our most original writer, so utterly one-of-a-kind that his best work is unique. Not only ‘The Mats’ but he himself is a griffin, a very monster of an artist. Others need what Eliot called an ‘objective correlative’ to image forth their meaning. But Franz eschews all such bridges, stairways and false fronts. He prefers to speak directly to us (in fact one of his stories is titled ‘A Story to Speak’), to communicate his meaning without the usual mechanism of fiction. There’s no plot in his stories and no character either, not in the Dickensian sense anyway. His is a ‘pure’ fiction, as his verse, which rejects conventional form and rhyme, is a ‘pure’ poetry. When he scans and rhymes, as in Sonnet, he sounds like Villa. The true Arcellana voice as poet is purest in ‘The third therese,’ which I think is one of his (and Philippine poetry’s) supremest lyrics…
“Franz sees how, by using a foreign language, the Filipino writer in English may be neglecting one part of the job of writing: ‘to interpret us to ourselves.’ But: ‘It is possible that it is the other part of the job of writing that he is doing well: to interpret us to others. And in time, at the rate the world is shrinking, this part of the job of writing may be the more important part after all.’”
Castillo, at whose wedding I stood as ring bearer, had written in a letter in August 2002 days after his teacher’s death:
“The last time I spoke to your father, he hospitably and generously contexted our visit on the premise of his approaching death. Following his lead, together we regarded the event and its presence as if it sat among us in the bright sun of that morning, and smiled at it in shy awe as if we were Greeks. Only when we were about to leave did he, flushed by wine, begin to speak of his newly acquired concern for certainties. In presumption, I reminded him of what he and the poets he loved had taught us: that uncertainty is our guard and guide. We are sure of nothing except perhaps the glimmering light on the face of a woman or dear child, heartrending for its fleetingness least of all ourselves, our circumstances and the very difficult, perhaps inconsequential, stories we try to say. So let the weak-minded be sure, allow the faint-hearted their consolation. We, sadly, are held to a higher standard of care. Indeed, life and art remind us daily how the odds are lopsided against us. What was justification enough, perhaps even some sort of curious glory, for the old Greek who invented the forlorn ghost of Achilles admitting to Odysseus, ‘I would rather be a swineherd among the living than be a prince among the dead!’ may have to suffice.”
This then is the tribute, this the decade of our literature.