Nick Joaquin

Nick Joaquin was a National Artist who fully deserved that title. Even if that honor had never been conferred on him, he would still have been in reality our national spokesman.

That fact was expressed very well, though somewhat differently, by Maria Isabel Ongpin in her column in Today. She said that Nick Joaquin "struck a chord in us". He made us aware "of the universe we lived in" which we had known but had not adverted to.

In a sense, though not in the ordinary meaning of the term, Nick was a historian. He might get facts and dates wrong, but he would perceive the real essential meaning of a historical era. I remember someone saying to me long ago: "If Nick Joaquin were to write about the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, he would probably get the facts wrong, but he would capture the spirit of that three-century commerce."

Nick Joaquin accepted Philippine culture such as it is and such as it has been. Much as some may deplore foreign influences, the fact is we have been subjected to and have assimilated them. They have become part of ourselves. There are some among us who would like to exclude all foreign influences. They would like to see a "pure Filipino culture" without any admixture of Spanish or American or Chinese or Indian influence. Desirable as such a culture might be, it does not exist. We are as we are, as we have been shaped by history. Nick accepted that fact and gave splendid expression to it.

Nick Joaquin (as Dr. Benito Legarda Jr. in the Free Press points out) has shown the importance of the 16th and 17th centuries: It was in those 200 years that we became one people, one nation, and the foundations of our present culture were laid.

In his earlier years Nick fell in love with the Old Manila, the Manila of Rizal and Luna and Hidalgo, and of the later generations that produced poets like Cecilio Apostol and Guerrero and Palma and Brenabe. It was a Manila that loved fiestas and processions and tertulias, and that put great value on virtue and dignity and delicadeza and the refinements of culture. Nick’s interest in that old culture produced one masterpiece, the 3-act play Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.

In later years his interest shifted from old Manila to the new. Not the city of gleaming skyscrapers of steel and glass, but the Manila of Avenida Rizal, of the crowded restaurants and tradesmen’s shops and street vendors. With great perception he wrote that the Filipino genius is for little things, not big ones. Among our best works of art are the small statues of saints. We are the only country where cigarettes are sold, not by the carton nor by the pack but by the stick. "Other nations cannot do business on that scale," he said.

But he also appreciated the culture of the elite. Talking of a banquet or ball held by wealthy families from the Visayas, he noted the beauty of the women. "It takes many generations to breed that kind of beauty."

That was Nick Joaquin, our National Artist in name and in fact.