An Eagle Flight Part 1

An Eagle Flight.

by Jose Rizal.

INTRODUCTION

JOSe RIZAL

In that horrible drama, the Philippine revolution, one man of the purest and n.o.blest character stands out pre-eminently--Jose Rizal--poet, artist, philologue, novelist, above all, patriot; his influence might have changed the whole course of events in the islands, had not a blind and stupid policy brought about the crime of his death.

This man, of almost pure Tagalo race, was born in 1861, at Calamba, in the island of Luzon, on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Laguna de Bay, where he grew up in his father's home, under the tutorage of a wise and learned native priest, Leontio.

The child's fine nature, expanding in the troublous latter days of a long race bondage, was touched early with the fire of genuine patriotism. He was eleven when the tragic consequences of the Cavite insurrection destroyed any lingering illusions of his people, and stirred in them a spirit that has not yet been allayed.

The rising at Cavite, like many others in the islands, was a protest against the holding of benefices by friars--a thing forbidden by a decree of the Council of Trent, but authorized in the Philippines, by papal bulls, until such time as there should be a sufficiency of native priests. This time never came. As the friars held the best agricultural lands, and had a voice--and that the most authoritative--in civil affairs, there developed in the rural districts a veritable feudal system, bringing in its train the arrogance and tyranny that like conditions develop. It became impossible for the civil authorities to carry out measures in opposition to the friars. "The Government is an arm, the head is the convent," says the old philosopher of Rizal's story.

The rising at Cavite miscarried, and vengeance fell. Dr. Joseph Burgos, a saintly old priest, was put to death, and three other native priests with him, while many prominent native families were banished. Never had the better cla.s.s of Filipinos been so outraged and aroused, and from this time on their purpose was fixed, not to free themselves from Spain, not to secede from the church they loved, but to agitate ceaselessly for reforms which none of them longer believed could be realized without the expulsion of the friars. In the school of this purpose, and with the belief on the part of his father and Leontio that he was destined to use his life and talents in its behalf, Jose was trained, until he left his home to study in Manila. At the College of the Jesuits he carried off all the honors, with special distinction in literary work. He wrote a number of odes; and a melodrama in verse, the work of his thirteenth year, was successfully played at Manila. But he had to wear his honors as an Indian among white men, and they made life hard for him. He specially aroused the dislike of his Spanish college mates by an ode in which he spoke of his patria. A Tagalo had no native land, they contended--only a country.

At twenty Rizal finished his course at Manila, and a few months later went to Madrid, where he speedily won the degrees of Ph.D. and M.D.; then to Germany--taking here another degree, doing his work in the new language, which he mastered as he went along; to Austria, where he gained great skill as an oculist; to France, Italy, England--absorbing the languages and literature of these countries, doing some fine sculpture by way of diversion. But in all this he was single-minded; he never lost the voice of his call; he felt more and more keenly the contrast between the hard lot of his country and the freedom of these lands, and he bore it ill that no one of them even knew about her, and the cancer eating away her beauty and strength. At the end of this period of study he settled in Berlin, and began his active work for his country.

Four years of the socialism and license of the universities had not distorted Rizal's political vision; he remained, as he had grown up, an opportunist. Not then, nor at any time, did he think his country ready for self-government. He saw as her best present good her continued union to Spain, "through a stable policy based upon justice and community of interests." He asked only for the reforms promised again and again by the ministry, and as often frustrated. To plead for the lifting of the hand of oppression from the necks of his people, he now wrote his first novel, "Noli Me Tangere."

The next year he returned to the Philippines to find himself the idol of the natives and a thorn in the flesh of friars and greedy officials. The reading of his book was proscribed. He stayed long enough to concern himself in a dispute of his townspeople with the Dominicans over t.i.tles to lands; then finding his efforts vain and his safety doubtful, he left for j.a.pan. Here he pursued for some time his usual studies; came thence to America, and then crossed to England, where he made researches in the British Museum, and edited in Spanish, "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas," by Dr. Antonio de Morga, an important work, neglected by the Spaniards, but already edited in English by Dean Stanley.

After publishing this work, in Paris, Rizal returned to Spain, where, in 1890, he began a series of brilliant pleas for the Philippines, in the Solidaridad, a liberal journal published at Barcelona and afterward at Madrid. But he roused little sympathy or interest in Spain, and his articles, repeated in pamphlets in the Philippines, served to make his position more dangerous at home.

Disheartened but steadfast, he retired to Belgium, to write his second novel, "El Filibusterismo." "Noli Me Tangere" is a poet's story of his people's loves, faults, aspirations, and wrongs; "El Filibusterismo"

is the work of a student of statecraft, pointing out the way to political justice and the development of national life. Inspired, it would seem, by his own creation of a future for his country, he returned to the Solidaridad, where, in a series of remarkable articles, he forecast the ultimate downfall of Spain in the Philippines and the rise of his people. This was his crime against the Government: for the spirit which in a Spanish boy would not permit a Tagalo to have a patria, in a Spaniard grown could not brook the suggestion of colonial independence, even in the far future.

And now having poured out these pa.s.sionate pleas and splendid forecasts, Rizal was homesick for this land of his. He went to Hong-Kong. Calamba was in revolt. His many friends at the English port did everything to keep him; but the call was too persistent. December 23d, 1891, he wrote to Despujols, then governor-general of the Philippines: "If Your Excellency thinks my slight services could be of use in pointing out the evils of my country and helping heal the wounds reopened by the recent injustices, you need but to say so, and trusting in your honor as a gentleman, I will immediately put myself at your disposal. If you decline my offer, ... I shall at least be conscious of having done all in my power, while seeking the good of my country, to preserve her union to Spain through a stable policy based upon justice and community of interests."

The governor expressed his grat.i.tude, promised protection, and Rizal sailed for Manila. But immediately after his landing he was arrested on a charge of sedition, whose source made the governor's promise impotent. Nothing could be proved against Rizal; but it was not the purpose of his enemies to have him acquitted. A half-way sentence was imposed, and he was banished to Dapidan, on the island of Mindanao. Despujols was recalled to Spain.

In this exile Rizal spent four years, beloved by the natives, teaching them agriculture, treating their sick (the poor without charge), improving their schools, and visited from time to time by patients from abroad, drawn here by his fame as an oculist. Among these last came a Mr. Taufer, a resident of Hong-Kong, and with him his foster-child, Josephine Bracken, the daughter of an Irish sergeant. The pretty and adventurous girl and the banished patriot fell in love with each other.

These may well have been among the happiest years of Rizal's life. He had always been an exile in fact: now that he was one in name, strangely enough he was able for the first time to live in peace among his brothers under the skies he loved. He sang, in his pathetic content:

"Thou dear illusion with thy soothing cup!

I taste, and think I am a child again.

Oh! kindly tempest, favoring winds of heaven, That knew the hour to check my shifting flight, And beat me down upon my native soil,..."

Always about his philological studies, he began here a work that should be of peculiar interest to us: a treatise on Tagalog verbs, in the English language. Did his knowledge of America's growing feeling toward Cuba lead him to foresee--as no one else seems to have done--her appearance in the Philippines, or was he thinking of England?

At Hong-Kong, and in his brief stays at Manila, Rizal had established the Liga Filipina, a society of educated and progressive islanders, whose ideas of needed reforms and methods of attaining them were at one with his own. His banishment was a warning of danger and checked the society's activity.

The Liga was succeeded, in the sense only of followed, by the Katipunan,--a native word also meaning league. The makers of this "league," though avowing the same purpose as the members of the other, were men of very different stamp. Their initiation was a blood-rite: they sought immediate independence; they preached a campaign of force, if not of violence. That a recent reviewer should have connected Dr. Rizal's name with the Katipunan is difficult to understand. Not alone are his writings, acts, and character against such a possibility, but so also is the testimony of the Spanish archives: for not only was it admitted at his final trial that he was not suspected of any connection with the Katipunan, but his well-known disapproval of that society's premature and violent action was even made a point against him. He was so much the more dangerous to the state because he had the sagacity to know that the times were not yet ripe for independence, and the honesty and purity of purpose to make only demands which the state herself well knew to be just.

When the rebellion of 1896 broke out, Rizal, still at Dapidan, knew that his life would not long be worth a breath of his beloved Philippine air. He asked, therefore, of the Government permission to go to Cuba as an army surgeon. It was granted, and he was taken to Manila--ovations all along his route--and embarked on the Isla de Panay for Barcelona. He carried with him the following letter from General Blanco, then governor-general of the Philippines, to the Minister of War at Madrid:

Manila, August 30th, 1896.

Esteemed General and Distinguished Friend:

I recommend to you with genuine interest, Dr. Jose Rizal, who is leaving for the Peninsula, to place himself at the disposal of the Government as volunteer army surgeon to Cuba. During the four years of his exile at Dapidan, he has conducted himself in the most exemplary manner, and he is in my opinion the more worthy of pardon and consideration, in that he is in no way connected with the extravagant attempts we are now deploring, neither those of conspirators nor of the secret societies that have been formed.

I have the pleasure to rea.s.sure you of my high esteem, and remain,

Your affectionate friend and comrade,

Ramon Blanco.

But as soon as the Isla was on the seas, despatches began to pa.s.s between Manila and Madrid, and before she reached her port the promises, acceptances, and recommendations of the Government officials were void. Upon landing, Rizal was immediately arrested and confined in the infamous Montjuich prison. Despujols was now military governor of Barcelona. The interview of hours which he is said to have had with his Filipino prisoner must have been dramatic. Rizal was at once re-embarked, on the Colon, and returned to Manila, a state prisoner. Blanco was recalled, and Poliavieja, a sworn friend of the clericals, was sent out.

Rizal was tried by court-martial, on a charge of sedition and rebellion. His guilt was manifestly impossible. Except as a prisoner of the state, he had spent only a few weeks in the Philippines since his boyhood. His life abroad had been perfectly open, as were all his writings. The facts stated in General Blanco's letter to the Minister of War were well known to all Rizal's accusers. The best they could do was to aver that he had written "depreciative words" against the Government and the Church. Some testimony was given against him by men who, since the American occupation, have made affidavit that it was false and forced from them by torture. Rizal made a splendid defence, but he was condemned, and sentenced to the death of a traitor. On that day Jose Rizal y Mercado and Josephine Bracken were married. Then the sweetness and strength of his character and his singleness of purpose made a beautiful showing. In the night, which his bride spent on her knees outside his prison, he wrote a long poem of farewell to his patria adorado, fine in its abnegation and exquisite in the wanderings of its fancy. He received the ministrations of a Jesuit priest. He was perfectly calm. "What is death to me?" he said; "I have sown, others are left to reap." At dawn he was shot.

The poem in which he left a record of his last thoughts was the following:

MY LAST THOUGHT.

Land I adore, farewell! thou land of the southern sun's choosing!

Pearl of the Orient seas! our forfeited Garden of Eden!

Joyous I yield up for thee my sad life, and were it far brighter, Young, rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I give it.

Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle, Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered nor paused in the giving.

What matters way or place--the cyprus, the lily, the laurel, Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture, When 'tis the hearth and the country that call for the life's immolation?

Dawn's faint lights bar the east, she smiles through the cowl of the darkness, Just as I die. Hast thou need of purple to garnish her pathway?

Here is my blood, on the hour! pour it out, and the sun in his rising Mayhap will touch it with gold, will lend it the sheen of his glory.

Dreams of my childhood and youth, and dreams of my strong young manhood, What were they all but to see, thou gem of the Orient ocean!

Tearless thine eyes so deep, unbent, unmarred thy sweet forehead.

Vision I followed from far, desire that spurred on and consumed me!

Greeting! my parting soul cries, and greeting again!... O my country!

Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment, Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the death-throe; Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land of enchantment!

If in the deep, rich gra.s.s that covers my rest in thy bosom, Some day thou seest upspring a lowly, tremulous blossom, Lay there thy lips, 'tis my soul; may I feel on my forehead descending, Deep in the chilly tomb, the soft, warm breath of thy kisses.

Let the calm light of the moon fall around me, and dawn's fleeting splendor; Let the winds murmur and sigh, on my cross let some bird tell its message; Loosed from the rain by the brazen sun, let clouds of soft vapor Bear to the skies, as they mount again, the chant of my spirit.