Trilogy of the Titans

Only Nick Joaquin could have paid adequate tribute to Franz Arcellana. If the situation were reversed, I’m sure Franz would have done the same. They were equals.

Together with Jose Garcia Villa, they were the titans of 20th century Philippine literature in English. They wrote–they lived, they were–like no other, writers non pareil; nobody else even came close.

When we were students at the UP Department of English and Comparative Literature in the days when English was a big taboo and writing for anything but the cause of the masses was betrayal, we were in great awe of the three of them. Jose Garcia Villa. Francisco Arcellana. Nick Joaquin. I still am in awe of them.

As aspiring writers, bright eyed and bushy tailed, we studied their works, read and re-read the poems and stories and plays and essays, and despaired–though we would not admit it–that we would never be like them, that we would never be able to write nearly as well as they did. As Nick Joaquin has said of Villa and, in his tribute, of Arcellana as well–and it just as correctly applies to Joaquin himself–they were born "already evolved" as writers, "equipped with the prose (or poetry) that was his creative tool... as complete an instrument in the early days" as it was in the later years. The word was born in them, as they were born to the word.

Villa, because he lived in far-away New York, was pure myth. We never met the great Doveglion, and rumors of his return–a visit, a residency at the university–were occasions for the telling and re-telling of Villa stories (one of my favorites was about how he refused to participate in a buffet because only barbarians go to the food; he wanted the food to come to him), and the myth grew with each story.

Joaquin was artist-in-residence at the UP Writers Summer Workshop I attended and, as I told poet Gemino Abad at the necrological service for Arcellana last Tuesday, I was scared sh--less at the prospect of facing Nick Joaquin at the workshop. Formidable indeed–and in deed–he was, with a soft drink bottle filled with some clear liquid (we never found out what it was, although the consensus was that it was pure, unadulterated gin) that he took swigs of as he dissected our works. In his tribute at last Tuesday’s service, Joaquin revealed why he stopped participating in those workshops: he had told Arcellana that a girl had burst into tears after he panned her writing, and "not all the poetry in the world is worth the tears of a child", to which Franz had replied, "Literature is worth all the tears in the world, whether childish or adult".

Fortunately, Franz Arcellana became a teacher; "disappeared into the classroom" was how he described his academic career. He taught fiction writing the year I was a junior, and of course I enrolled in his classes (two semesters), about a dozen of us in the early afternoon class twice a week, an hour and a half each session. The first day of the first class he made us read the opening paragraph of a story by Villa, and asked what it was that showed the author to be a conscious writer. It was the word "salmon", used to describe the dusk, and thus began a journey of discovery of the word that this master, teacher, writer, explorer, adventurer led us on. I was hooked; I would learn about the written word, and Franz Arcellana would teach me.

I was never absent, never late for Franz’s class (I played hooky in my other classes–more often than I think I should admit to–but never in Franz’s). My classmates and I would sit on the floor outside the classroom to wait for Franz, then watch as he glided toward us in his soft shoes and his loose cotton shirt (often a blue and white checkered one) untucked–"tuck out" was what we used to say–a couple of slim volumes in one hand (he never brought thick books to class). He would take us through story after story, word upon word. And he would make it all so magical.

He never taught his own stories, which may be understandable but no less a pity, for it would have allowed us a glimpse into how an artist’s mind worked. I never dared ask him about his stories, although I had a lot of questions about his stories.

Once I was brash–and foolish–enough to lament the exclusion of the last line of the original Divide by Two in its re-written version–that all-time favorite line "But the great wall of China that Ben asked about is not the great wall of China of which I speak". He looked at me–a little astonished, I think–and, with a patience one extends to a child who isn’t expected to know any better, said with a chuckle, "Doreen (with emphasis on the first syllable, as he always pronounced it), a story has to be written the way it has to be written." And I am proud to say I knew enough to keep my big mouth shut.

Last Tuesday’s Pagdadalamhati ng Bayan at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was a fitting tribute to Franz. Four National Artists–Nick Joaquin, Frankie Sionil Jose (both for literature), Arturo Luz and Billy Abueva (both for visual arts; Abueva reportedly is doing a death mask of Franz)–offered flowers, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra played Stardust, his kumpare Nick Joaquin gave a moving yet funny tribute, ending with "Franz, I’ll be seeing you" (earlier he said, as only Quijano de Manila could, he was not saying good-bye because "I’ve got a ticket to ride–one way!"), writers who were his students paid homage, his works were read and performed. His eldest son Francisco Jr., a kidney specialist, responded on behalf of the family, a big and growing family that Franz loved dearly (a former student of his wife Emy, a political science professor also at the UP, relates how Franz used to come after class to pick up his wife, always greeting her with a kiss).

Those of us privileged to have known Franz, to have studied under him, to have shared the passion of the word with him, have a special measure of blessing. For all those who never met him, all is not lost, because his stories, his poems, all his written works remain; they are there for the reading, for the discovering, written as they were meant to be written, written as only a hand and a heart of genius could have written them.