Taginting Sa Kanyang Utak: An Essay

“Mariang Makiling” written by Eli Ang Barroso is a piece belonging from Luzon and Southern Tagalog literature. In its short story form, the story was expressed in the richness of the Tagalog language. At the beginning, the reader is already bombarded with the words of the language that seem to have initiated romantic elements found in the story.

A Review: Salamanca

my choice for the scond book review is a novel written by Dean

“Power of an Artist: Salamanca“

1. Introduction

My choice for the second book review is a novel written by Dean Francis Alfar entitled Salamanca, which won the Palanca Grand Prize Award for the Novel in 2005 as published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Dean Francis Alfar is a playwright, essayist, and fictionist whose works are performed and published locally and abroad. He has won 8 Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature and the Manila critics Circle National Book Award for the acclaimed graphic novel Siglo: Freedom. He is also a comic book creator, and a marketing and publishing entrepreneur. Salamanca is his first novel.

The book revolves around the lives of its characters- presented in magical realist fiction genre of writing. At first, I was taken aback by the magical and fantastical elements of the novel that I wondered whether I could appreciate it. Yet it was through the course of events in the book that made me realize how effective the workings were in the novel that all the while give the story a realistic touch and an admirable uniqueness among the literary efforts of great contemporary writers. I loved how the book created a world of magic and reality through love in the lives of its many characters.

II. Body

According to Caroline S. Hau in the book’s preface: ” The novel is about the sorcery wrought by love, lust, and literature, by friendship, family and the Filipino nation. Salamanca tracks the stormy relationship between the polymorphous-perverse Gaudencio Rivera, whose passions ignite prodigious feat of writin and wandering, and Palawena beauty Jacinta Cordova, whose perfection transmutes walls into glass and adoration into art. Tracing the arc of an imperfect marriage sundered by acts of nature(not least human) and sutured by acts of will (not least nonhuman), and vividly peopled by a multigenerational and multinational cast of kithand kin, this audacous work of imagination takes the reader on a magical exursion into the Philippine life and history while setting new standards for the Filipino novel along the way.”

This novel reminded me of Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate.” Both novels have similarities through supernatural elements like in the first meeting of Gauencio and Jacinta:

“At the moment their eyes met through the see-through walls of the inconceivable house, Gaudencio dropped the cigarette from his hand as he was devastated by exposure to Jacinta’s luminous beauty….For Jacinta, an invisible bolt of electricity stuck her where she stood, causing her to gasp once before the energy arced from her hands to the cooking pot she carried, causing the clump of string beans that she had been planning to prepare for supper to explode from the intense heat, releasing pods that left contrails as they flew with untoward vigor”(12).

A series of extraordinary events happened during a storm in the latter part of the book stating the lines: “The inhuman storm swept up all four victims of outrageous passion from off their backs or legs, buffeting them in coiling cross currents as they rose off the ground”(26). I just didn’t think that the four victims namely Gaudencio, Jacinta, Mrs. Helen Brown and Ceasar could survive being whirled by the wind.

Prior to all series of unrealistic or rather fantastical event is what had happened to the infamous woman who lives in a house in the island of Tagbaoran in the province of Palawan: “Jacinta Cordova was a firm believer of modesty, and did everything she could to comport herself in a manner that was beyond reproach,especially since the walls of the house she lived in were transparent.She had adjusted as best as she could when her unearthly beauty came into full force on the eve of her twelfth birthday that midnight, she had trembled and closed her eyes as a potent radiance burst from her skin, transforming all the walls inside and outside her house to a material that resembled fine glass”(5).

One significant thing about the novel is the duplication of pages 57-64 and 81-88. I wondered if that was due to publishing errors (because some donated books are defects or discarded) or it had a reason for it being that way. I have settled for the latter because I think those pages contain most of the crucial scenes of the novel.

The flashbacks were wrought well in the book. Without causing confusion, the flashbacks pieced the story together, showing a juxtaposed angle of the separate lives of its characters. The time frame of the story was relevant to the historical facts in the Philippine history and setting. The techniques used by the author continually paces the movement of the story. Cirilo F. Bautista, also a notable writer, stated that the narrative moved at an appropriate psychological pace to give us an interpretation of a slice of Philippine life that is both common and unique. A comment stated by Lawrence L. Ypil says, “In the end, it reminds us ultimately in its expansive scope of the historical retelling and fable making fantasy and ‘reality,’ what good novels, when they work, can do.”

In the third chapter of A Preface to Literary Analysis an important detail was discussed in these statements:

What distinguishes literature from nonliterature is its invented quality…. style is the way a writes, whatever he writes about regardless of its relationship to actual fact. It is however, neither mere mannerism or idiosyncrasy, but the sum of those devices, inherited or newly invented by which language in its various possibilities is employed to bring an implied reader into a hypothetical world, contrived by an empirical author speaking through an artificial voice”(Zitner et al. 33).

These relevant arguments provides an emphasis on the devices that render a styled texture to any work as that which is evident in Salamanca.

III. Conclusion

Salamanca is a novel worth reading. The book made me understand the deeper meaning of the lives of its fictional characters. At first, I thought I wouldn’t finish reading it because a novel is lengthy but then the in reading the first part, I was hooked by the novel.

1. References:

Alfar, Dean Francis. Salamanca. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press,2005.

Zitner, Sheldon et al. A Preface To Literary Analysis. New York: Scott Foresman & Company,1964. 33

phil Lit

1. Compare and contrast the female characters in “Tanabata’s Wife,” “The Virgin,” and “Sounds of Sunday,” according to their motivations, their personalities, and the manners in which they confronted and resolved their “predicaments.” What do you think were the intentions of the writers in portraying the feminine persona in each of their stories this way?

A very striking similarity relevant to all three stories is that they can be categorized according to their theme: love. The three love stories portray women in their very own circumstances. All of which were showed perspectives that emphasized the realistic situations in real life.

CL 150 Exam

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1) Of the poems discussed in class, choose 3 poems you liked best.Justify your answer Of the poems of Filipino poets discussed in class, I like “Ang Pagbabalik”, “Brief Beauty is Brave”, and “My Islands.” These are which I like most because they are for me examples of good poems that made me think of it in a deeper.sense. “Ang Pagbabalik” by Jose Corazon de Jesus belong to the Philippine literature during the span of 1890s. The poem has a narrative element which makes its plot evident. It is written in the kind of Tagalog language which makes it true to its time. Because of the melancholic tone of the poem, the intense emotion is heightened to the extent that I as its reader understood the feeling of the male persona. This makes de Jesus’ poem my favorite. The other poem entitled “Brief Beauty is Brave” was written by Bienvinido Santos. This time, It belongs to Philippine Literature in Ebglish. One fetaure of the poem is free verse quatrains which goes well with the persona’s commemoration of his own country. It all happens when he sat in a classroom listening to a lecture, all of a sudden he comes to a discussion on beauty on his time away from home. The deeper underlying point is thatwhen in the brink of dying there exists a brief beauty that is thenonly realized. The poem’s message for me is the willingness to endure and to enjoy what life offers. The last one is “My Islands” by NVM Gonzales. His poem has nationalistic themes. Like that of Santos’ poem, this poem also remarks on the beauty of the his hometown. The poem romanticizes beauty as it is for the poet. I really like the rhythm of the poem and its shortness that in the end it is able to say how proud the islands are of themselves. These poems are the things I like most. They are for me wonderful creations by Filipino poets. 2) Discuss the dominant themes & styles of Philippine short stories in English, use specific selections as illustrations to your ideas. There are different themes that revolve in the Philippine short stories. And there exists a dominant themes relating to each others work. Love is very dominant in almost all short stories. Mostly in “Dead Stars” by Paz Marquez-Benitez abounds its characters’lives. The theme is portrayed revealing such vagueness that made me feel whether such tendencies happen.The same Love theme also is evident in Jose Garcia Villa’s Footnote to Youth, Midsummer & Heat of Manuel Arguilla, and in “The Mats” of Francisco Arcellana. Another theme dominant in most stories is human nature. By reading them, one comes to realize the different characters in the story. Like In “Writer in War” by Francisco Arcellana, Salvador shows human wilingness to survive despite of the coming face to face with death and thus, along with it is the wisdom he had gained.Female writers in Englisgh such as Paz Latorena and Ligaya Victorio-Reyes both reveal to us lives of women in different circumstances. Through their stories there would be an  examination of why and how the character felt pain, frustrations even insecurities. One thing that enabled the stories to convey their subtle messages is the tone that brigns about the whole mood of the stories. One element in short stories is its narrative element which allows the experience to be explicated also internally. There is also the good use of Flashback technique which reveals to us the prior events that help to develop the story. These are the themes and style of Filipino writers that makes them credible for understanding more of human existence through experiences and exploration of possibilities. 3)Discuss and justify your top 3 choices among the short stories discussed in class. My top three short stories are as follows “Dead Stars”, “Scent of Apples” and “Water from the Well.” These three stories are amont the things that make me admire its writers and their works. “Dead Stars” by Paz Marquez-Benitez is the first short story in English that is why the infatuation of writer in the new language was applied. The story is characterize by romantic elements. The descriptive detail of the characters makes helps for the emphasis of the intention as wella s to setting the mood of the story.The theme love is evident in that it revolves on the lives of Alfredo, Julia and Esperanza.”Scent of Apples” by Bienvinido Santos examines an experience during a lecture in America.The themes of Santos in most of his stories are grounded on the dislocation or transplantation of fellow Filipinos in another place and their experience in marrying Americans. The character somehow nostalgia but in a quite different sense for it seems that they are at least contented of being in a foreign land. The apples in the story is a symbol or representation that concerns an entirely different reality for Fabia. The last one is “Water from the Well” by Estrella Alfon. The story is among the writers autobiographical works. In her point of “truth as fiction and fictionalizing truth” the story for me touches lives. It made me experience life in the countryside as what the I persona had. Some of the representations like the well for an instance signify a relative importance to the story. These are the things that makes the three stories successful in recounting the story to me as a reader. For me, I came to realize that Filipinos can be as great as the American and English writers in using  the English language as medium. I really learned to appreciate the works that founded Philippine Literature.

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Gauzed Wounds

The second brother came home,

as the other siblings did,

without a wife

rather with a beloved

sister

in his mind-

her sweet smile

and the gentleness of her gestures

incomparable from the other women he met.

This affection

if only he was warned

to put love aside

from brotherly care

would’ve saved them

from such a predictable strife.

For in the guise of foreseen obligation