‘Po-on’: A Filipino’s memory, mirror and window

Literature records and embodies centuries of human thought and feeling, preserving for us the minds of people who lived before us, who were like us and unlike us, against whom we can measure our common humanity and historical difference. When we read great literature, something changes in us that stays changed. – Donald Hall, American poet

In Po-on, Francisco Sionil Jose does more than make a change. He relives a memory of a long ago past, at the turn of the 19th century, of an Ilocano family driven out of their homeland and forced to migrate to other parts of Luzon. He creates a mirror that reflects a Filipino’s image of himself, as he never sees himself the way he knows himself. Lastly, he opens a window where one looks outside of himself, outside his home, and realizes nationhood and becomes aware of his duty to his nation.

The word Filipiniana evokes images of that small room in the library of my high school alma mater. Approximately a 10-sq.m. area, the Filipiniana room was decorated with plastic figurines of Filipino heroes, small Filipino flags, and a few books on Philippine history. Most of the time that I was there, there would be at most only three others. What I remember reading in that small section of the library were Andres Bonifacio’s Tagalog poems like "Pag-Ibig sa Tinubuang Bayan," and some of his translations of Jose Rizal’s works like "Mi Ultimo Adios." History to me then was about knowing current events and facts and trivia in history and social science.

It was later in college when my interest in Filipiniana really sprouted roots. I began to see the world beyond the borders of science and mathematics. My view of history and events changed and I began to realize that the study of them is more than merely committing to memory facts and trivia about famous personalities. That to be rooted was more than just getting a perfect score in history quizzes.

I learned that the study of history entails more than knowing what happened in the past and when they happened. It’s about understanding and interpreting the vicissitudes of life, the turning points, and the accidents that shaped the present time by looking at the hows and whys.

It is with such insight that I discovered F. Sionil Jose. I was in my junior year when I chanced upon his novels Mass and The Pretenders. As I was reading those novels, I felt an instant meeting of minds with Jose. Perhaps it was because his main character resembled me in many ways – being young, I had a lot of questions baffling me. As I read him, I became more aware of my own thought processes.

It is Po-on, however, that I find full of meaning. "Po-on" is an Ilocano word that means roots or the beginning, an apt title though it was the last-to-be-written and published historical novel in his Rosales saga (Tree, My Brother, My Executioner, The Pretenders, Mass and finally Po-on) .

Po-on takes place near the end of the 19th century when Filipinos, with the aid of the Americans, battle and expel the Spaniards who colonized and ruled the country for more than three centuries. It is the brutality that provokes a peace-loving family to move out of their homeland to find a new one and in the process suffer deaths. Out of this family emerges the character of Eustaquio Samson, or Istak, an acolyte who was dismissed from the seminary by a corrupt priest, and leads his family to flee to the central plains of Luzon.

Forced to flee from increasing oppression and to lead his family on a journey for a new home, Istak finds that the joy that came with the expulsion of the Spaniards was ephemeral, for he finds himself later in bloody contact with the Americans.

A Memory

Impossible as it may sound, I can’t help "reminiscing" over a past that I never lived in reality. It’s as if I am right there in that period where the action is. Probably, F. Sionil Jose intended it this way. I sense that his intended reader is someone who is already informed about history, assumed to be knowledgeable about Philippine heroes, the 1896 revolution against Spain and the greatest Filipino novels written by Dr. Jose Rizal – Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo – from which F. Sionil Jose apparently picks up where Jose Rizal left off.

True enough, the characters of Rizal’s novels are already in the hearts and minds of the ordinary Filipino. If one joins a quiz bee contest, even the unschooled can easily mention Ibarra or Sisa who has become an archetypal crackpot, used as a role by contestants in game shows. What Po-on does is create the story of an ordinary Filipino, an Ilocano who faces the same battles as our popular heroes and historical icons, badgered by the same conflicts between and conundrums on personal comfort and social duty.

A Mirror

Po-on is a mirror of the Ilocano soul. Being born, raised and educated in Metro Manila and because my family assimilated its culture, I often wonder which traits and fiber of my character are Ilocano and which are not. In his novel F. Sionil Jose paints and renders the Ilocano character that I have long observed yet found no explanation for. Having imbibed Manila’s culture, I can only recall what my grandfather told me about the Ilocano migration, about their means of livelihood, about the American period and the Japanese occupation. But I was too young then, or was not thinking enough to wonder and ask the whys and hows. Through his character Istak and his interactions with his family on their tortuous hegira – his father Ba-ac, his mother Mayang, his siblings An-no and Bit-tik, his friend Don Vicente and his wife Dalin, and the Sublime Paralytic Apolinario Mabini – Jose does a lot more than he thinks he does.

A Window

At the same time, Po-on opens a window to a world more than what is told in history books. It defines patriotism and heroism.

Istak ultimately makes the sacrifice at the end of the novel, which is a depiction or rather a recreation of the Battle of Tirad Pass which Jose compares to the Battle of Thermopylae.

The other major character is the Sublime Paralytic Apolinario Mabini. I must admit that I didn’t know much about Apolinario Mabini other than he was a crippled hero. But what made him a hero? And what is the significance of his condition? In Po-on, Mabini is given a breath of fresh air, situating him and Istak in a series of questions and answers in an interesting scene between a healer (Istak) and Mabini (the paralyzed), making the reader journey with them in a cerebral conversation about personal safety and social duty.

The stories of heroes who go beyond their limitations have become common news because media covers them. It makes me wonder if anything extraordinary is left about Apolinario Mabini more than his being a disabled character. Po-on relives and makes him "talk," making me curious to learn more about him.

Po-on is more than a historical work of fiction, more than a novel. It’s a vehicle for stimulation, an eye-opener that creates real change in the heart and mind of every reader.