According to the Text Blombos Cave Is Significant for Accomplishments in Art and Technology
Teodoro A. Agoncillo is considered i of the most important historians of our fourth dimension. His new brand of historiography did away with conventional means of writing the history of Philippines—through the eyes of foreigners—and introduced a more Filipino-centric style, seeing the events of the Philippines unfold through the eyes of Filipinos. Today, his works are considered essential to the study of Philippine history, and take besides transcended to the realm of classic literature.
In 1985 Agoncillo was included in the roster of the Order of National Scientists by President Ferdinand E. Marcos for his contributions to Philippine History. His notable works includeThe History of the Filipino People;Malolos: The Crunch of the Commonwealth; The Writings and Trials of Bonifacio; andRevolt of the Masses.
To celebrate his birth centennial, we are publishing two essays from the bookHistory and Culture, Language and Literature: Selected Essays of Teodoro A. Agoncillo edited byDr. Bernardita Reyes Churchill.
- History as Humanities
- Literature every bit History
History as humanities*
Past Teodoro A. Agoncillo
When one looks over the catalogues of universities here and abroad, one finds that history equally a field of study is categorized every bit a social science. At the University of Chicago, all the same, it is classified as humanities and social scientific discipline, and the educatee is given the dubious privilege of choosing whether the field of study should be included in his humanities or social science requirements. Social scientists, more often than not speaking, are of the belief that history is a social science, a stand that is questioned by the humanists. Among students of history, at that place has been a disagreement: some consider it a social science, while others allocate it with the humanities. In the Philippines, history is considered by the great majority of students and teachers as social science. Only a small-scale minority believes it to belong to the humanities and, consequently, belongs to the realm of literature.
Every bit a student of history, I have ever held the belief that history as a field of study and as a species of composition has the elements of the humanities and the social sciences. The historian's methodology is scientific and does non allow the literary artist's imagination to interfere with the scientific method of investigating the data used in historical writing. On the other hand, the processed information are given life, meaning, and significance by the creative temperament of the historian and thereby becomes a co-operative of the humanistic studies. The historian uses his imagination to re-capture the past as closely equally his data allow him, but in thus using his imagination he differs from the literary artist in that he could not, should non, let his imagination to roam wildly but to put a rein to its flying by sticking closely to his facts. It is in this respect that the historical imagination differs from the literary imagination. At whatsoever rate, imagination, express though it is by the materials already established as authentic and credible, is a very of import chemical element of historical writing. Without it, whatsoever historical slice becomes a dull compilation of data devoid of life. And since history deals with life every bit it was lived, that slice of unimaginative, uninspired writing is not history only at best a calendar.
In the social science, it is not necessary to exist literary in order to be great. In other words, ane can become a great social scientist without being a great writer, although in that location are social scientists who are too proficient writers. Thomas Huxley readily comes to mind. A historian, on the other hand, in order to exist recognized as great must accept a literary manner that is at once clear, flowing, and charming. This is because a historian, to be disarming, must succeed in re-creating the past or at least approximating the by as gleaned from reliable and credible sources. Thus, all peachy historians were besides great writers: Gibbon, Froude, and Macaulay in England; Ranke and Momsen in Deutschland; Taine and Michelet in France; Motley, Parkman, and Prescott in the United States. The historian, therefore, should provide his readers not only with the bones of history, just with flesh and claret as well. Consequently, while the historian uses the scientific method in investigating his materials, he uses the methods known to the humanist in breathing life into the past. This is necessary in club to make the past become the present, which is to say, to make the past alive and contemporaneous with us. This is what the Italian philosopher-historian, Benedetto Croce, meant when he said that all history is gimmicky to the humanistic studies. The not bad French biographer of Christ, Ernest Renan, eloquently said that History is not i of those studies of artifact called umbratiles, for which a at-home listen and industrious habits suffice. It touches the deep problems of human life; it requires the whole man with all his passions. Soul is equally necessary to information technology as to a poem or work of art, and the individuality of the writer should exist reflected in it.
Because history is a re-cosmos of the past as seen by the historians, information technology is not objective. In the process of re-creation, the personality of the historian plays an important function. He displays his passion, his prejudices, and emotion — in brief, his humanity — and equally such he cannot help existence affected by the events and personalities he is re-creating. Information technology is this subjectivity that characterizes all dandy historians, a subjectivity that makes for divergencies in estimation. It is ignorance of the nature of historical writing that fabricated even learned men in the by say that history is and must remain objective — an impossibility since the historian as human or woman cannot run away from himself/herself. We as man beings have feelings, emotions, prejudices, loves, and jealousies which play a function in our writing, whether this be a mere alphabetic character, essay, or an extended historical work. Information technology is my belief that an objective historian is unhuman and, therefore, irksome and incommunicable to deal with. I do not know of any such unhuman historian.
Since interpretations in history vary from person to person and from time to time, some people fright that the readers might become confused in the wilderness of interpretations. There demand not exist any such fright, for far from sowing confusion differences among historians make for intelligent and critical appraisal on the part of the readers. What the readers should fright is uniformity of opinions or interpretations, for such a situation tin merely come about at a time and in a place where liberty has no meaning.
Let me think my days as a educatee on the old campus of the University of the Philippines on Padre Faura, Manila. In those days history as taught to united states concerned mainly with political history. A British historian of the nineteenth century once said that history was past politics — and this definition, so considered witty, became the accustomed dictum in the academe. With 1 exception, all our senior professors taught us political history. There was no endeavour to expand the horizon of history to include economics, literature, the arts and music, and social life. History and then was conceived as mainly, if not exclusively, by politics and any inclusion of matter exterior politics was looked upon as an affront to the historical field of study, if not heresy. The issue for the student was that unless he had a natural inclination and talent for the arts and literature, his readings were invariably narrow and pedestrian. Moreover, we were warned confronting existence literary, for it was believed that literature and history did not mix. Such strictures gave us the shivers and led almost of us to carelessness the pursuit of historical scholarship. But times have changed. Today, history is not just by politics but past cultural and social life. To deviate from Spengler's longitudinal grapheme of the study of history, this field of study every bit it should be taught today must be a cross-department of a people's life. It is just in examining the varied contexts of a people's life that one gains a clear insight into the graphic symbol.
In this connection, I recall it pertinent to betoken out that history as a field of study in the schools and colleges in our land is considered worthless, for information technology was made clear to me on several occasions that students are compelled to memorize dates, names of persons and places, and so earned the enmity of the students. In the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, Philippine history as a subject was abolished a few years ago because, according to some students, the authorities of the college felt the subject to be irrelevant, and information technology was irrelevant because the teachers taught nada only dates, something which the students abhor. Unfortunately, the higher authorities at Diliman, Quezon City, did nothing to dissuade the Los Baños picayune gods from "killing" a subject so necessary for the proper understanding of our past and, therefore, of our future. The little gods failed to realize that history is never irrelevant and that if the students today do not have any sympathy for history as a subject field it is non considering of any defect in the subject field but because of the shortcomings of certain teachers of history. I do not at all blame the students for abandoning or avoiding history, but I exercise blame those teachers who believe that dates and names of persons and places constitute history. To be sure, dates and names do non institute history; they are meaningless unless placed in their proper context and perspective. To make the students memorize dates and names is to discourage them from appreciating what history actually ways. History is non but an interesting discipline; it is a lively one, for it is recreation of the past, and the by is always colorful and exciting especially considering we view information technology from the perspective of the present — which is to say, the distance that separates us from the past gives us the necessary perspective to come across it as information technology was: exciting, colorful, and palpitating with life and all passion, emotion, fright, joy, sorrow, happiness, dubiety, promise, and exasperation. It is for this reason that it is the near lively of all the humanistic studies, and it is lively because information technology recreates the by with a deep sense of realism and verisimilitude. No other humanistic discipline approaches history in this respect.
Consequently, history every bit a subject area should be taught in a lively way, always keeping in mind that to re-create the by, which is the primary office of the historian, is non to be dull or foolish, but to be interesting — equally interesting as the actual events of the past were when they were being enacted. It is, indeed, a sad reflection on the instructor of history not to be able to infect the students with the amuse of what happened in the past as recorded for ages; nor is a history instructor less competent for making the by live over again earlier the eyes of the students, as in a newsreel. A good teacher of history is non he who can rattle off dates and names like a trained parrot, merely he who makes the by come alive in the imagination of the students. A bad instructor, to cite an example, is one who says matter-of-factly that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December vii, 1941, Hawaiian time, and soon the U.s.a. alleged war on Japan. This argument, although accurate, is merely factual and unimaginative. A good teacher, on the other hand, will describe how the Japanese airmen wrought havoc on the American navy at Pearl Harbor, the inferno thus created, the confusion, the fear, the anger aroused in the American people in Hawaii, the reaction of the American people and their officials upon hearing the treacherous attack and their morals at the fourth dimension of the attack and after, and then on. No one tin be expected to re-capture all the details of an event, and history is non expected to item everything that happened in the past. But a choice is given to the individual historian in selecting his materials, and a historian who has a expert command of language, assuming of form he has a lively imagination, is in a better position to re-create for the present what happened in the past than 1 who has no control of linguistic communication or who has no imagination.
All this implies that a good teacher must have a catholicity of gustation and the ability to capeesh not alone the subtleties of the arts, but also the implications of philosophy and letters. Is this a tall order? Perhaps it is, but then, as the onetime saying goes, there is no royal road to cognition and wisdom. Through unsustained try, the hard road can be made as to brand the travel less hazardous and more rewarding. It takes infinite time and patience to make a expert history teacher out of a fresh college graduate. No summas, magnas, and cum laudes tin become good teachers overnight. Feel, past which I mean not but personal but intellectual experience, help much in the making of a expert teacher, and as experience grows with the years and so does emotional maturity. The intellectual experience that I mention relates to the intensive and all-encompassing studies made after graduating from college, for existent instruction begins only outside of the university. What we learn in higher is a pocket-sized drop in the sea of knowledge, and most of what we accept learned in college needs to be unlearned after graduation.
In proposing that history should be a cross-section of people'southward life and culture, I do non mean to say that the historians should include everything virtually the social life, civilisation, politics, and economy of a country. This is impossible for a human to undertake. Perhaps in the Philippine context, a improve solution is for a group of scholars to write a book that would evaluate the achievements of a people along the lines indicated. But while this is feasible, it nevertheless may lack the required unity and coherence and thereby defeat its own purpose. A ameliorate alternative, I call up, is for a grouping of scholars in each discipline to submit to a scholar-writer their own findings and let him write the volume on the ground of the scholar's findings and interpretations. Of course, the result of his writing should be gone over carefully by each of the scholars who prepared the original draft in social club to correct any errors crept into the training of the scholar-writer'southward draft. In this way, unity of purpose and style is achieved. Peradventure if the writer has a lively imagination and a good style he could produce a volume that every reader, whether he exist a history student or a mere layman would savour with gusto and thus make history a subject devoutly to be loved. This is not an impossibility. As a thing of fact, we have a good case of this kind of book, the multivolume The Story of Culture by the philosopher Volition Durant and his married woman, Ariel. This is, I believe, the best example so far of an eclectic history written in a readable and articulate style, with touches of humor and wit. If only this multi-volume work on the history of civilisation can exist compressed into a unmarried volume without losing its charm, flavor, and accurateness, then it tin can be used as a textbook on a course in the history of civilisation, a two-semester form. Only a man with a disciplined heed can compress such massive work into a single book. A similar piece of work, that is, a compressed work, has been washed with respect to Toynbee's multi-volume The Written report of History, which was abridged into two volumes.
In the Philippine colleges and universities, the piece of work of compressing the results of centuries of achievements in the arts, letters, and scientific discipline is enormously difficult not only considering the language of the classroom is a strange language whose nuances nosotros have not to this day mastered, but too considering we practice not have an eminent writer in English who could weld together in very readable and accurate fashion the technical knowledge that has come downwards to us through the ages. We may accept the expertise, to be liberal, in the arts, the sciences, and letters, merely we practice not have the genius who could put them together in orderly, readable, and meaningful fashion. In his absenteeism, I advise that for either a one- or two-semester course in the liberal arts, competent faculty members in the iii divisions should be named to prepare a syllabus for each of the three divisions. Each syllabus should be a resumé of the findings in the partitioning, taking care that the whole syllabus — that is, the combined syllabi of the three divisions — should non exceed one- or two-semester piece of work on the undergraduate level. In other words, the experts in each sectionalisation are called upon to be concise and effective. Since nobody tin handle the whole course alone, a relay of experts in each division should lecture to the students. For this purpose, I call back the lecture hall should adapt or hold from eighty to a hundred students. The lecturer does not accept to correct the exam papers; the faculty members not assigned to lecture should do the "dirty" task. These non-lecturers can audit the lecture classes to familiarize themselves with the disciplines not falling inside their competence. This is i of the means in which college students of whatever ambition or orientation can imbibe a semblance of the liberal arts in one or two semesters. Of course, it is superficial, but since the purpose is non to make the students cultured within one or 2 semesters but but to acquaint them with the achievements of homo in his peregrination to civilization, this one- or two-semester course, if properly handled, might lead the serious-minded students to delve deeper into the subject area and in the class of his long life he might become truly cultured. The ultimate purpose of the form should exist to arouse the interest of the students in human being's evolution of his intellectual endowments so give them a risk to call up for themselves. That's all there is to information technology in teaching.
*The original essay, "History equally Humanistic Studies." was delivered at Primal Philippine Academy on 31 May 1977. The commodity was published in The Manila Review thirteen (December 1977): 33-39.
Literature equally history*
By Teodoro A. Agoncillo
To those who take been reared in the formalistic literary traditions, the study of literature is limited to the imagination of man every bit a office of the creative process. The literary work is mostly taken in isolation and considered as an aesthetic object to exist admired or dismissed in accordance with the reader'south intellectual groundwork and predilection. Few realize that literature without history is unthinkable, for literature, being life, cannot exist apart from the times and circumstances in which it was conceived. While literary works may be enjoyed in themselves, yet the thoughtful reader can deepen that enjoyment by inquiring — and satisfying his enquiry — why such-and-such a novel, play, poem, short story or essay came into being, what circumstances made the author react the way he did, and the problems that confronted him, problems outside of aesthetics, such as those that arise in times of stress and crises. To reply these and related problems is to go into history which furnishes the reader with the proper perspective. Thus, Swift'due south Gulliver'due south Travels may be read and enjoyed for what information technology is, but this enjoyment tin exist heightened by considering the circumstances which brought it into being and why the author wrote it. The sheer enjoyment is for children and less sophisticated adults, while the deeper enjoyment is for the 1 who chinks and feels equally he reads. Thus whatever literary piece to be properly enjoyed and appreciated should be approached with an eye to its historical milieu.
No reader, native or foreign, can enjoy Rizal'south Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo without knowing the circumstances that led the author to conceive them and the reason for their beingness. The humor, the irony, the piercing satire in their pages would be lost on the reader if he does non sympathise the historical background of those novels. I one time said at another fourth dimension and place that Rizal's novels are not, properly speaking, fiction. They are socio-historical novels which give us an intimate glimpse into the condition of Philippine society and the style and morals of the people — the natives as well as the Spanish rulers — at a definite indicate in time. To look upon them as pure fiction is to misread Rizal'south intent and purpose.
While then much history is needed for the proper understanding and appreciation of literature, it is also truthful, on the other hand, that then much literature is needed to make history. The one furnishes the groundwork, the other is needed to make data less incomplete. In the Philippines, very few historians, if any, consider literary works as sources of history, for information technology is believed that literary works being fiction cannot be relied upon to enrich the historian's arts and crafts. If at all, literature is included in a historical work equally part of a people's cultural achievements. It is not, nevertheless, written or published literary works lonely that can exist used as historical sources, but also what is termed floating or oral literature, such equally myths, legends, and traditions. These and the literary works may not be as copious a source for written history as letters, memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and personal or official documents, but some of their aspects are equally valid equally the authenticated documents in the archives. The numerous tales well-nigh the Spanish friars, for case, are folk inventions, just their historical implication is valid, namely, that many Spanish friars led a dissolute life. The common folks who spun those tales of friar misdeeds were non maliciously motivated simply were historically minded, unconsciously perhaps, and wanted to perpetuate for posterity the licentious conduct of certain friars by inventing stories whose implications had a ring of truth. And and so even without the testimonies of foreign travelers who witnessed and wrote about friar misdeeds, a student of history can rely on the friar tales for an appreciation of their conduct.
In using written and oral literature equally sources of history, however, the pupil should be cautious lest he falls into the abysmal pit of pure fiction, and, consequently, cause the intelligent reader to doubt his credibility, if not his sanity. In literature, whether written or oral, the events and personalities described may or may not be real. Information technology is the duty of the historian to determine by astringent critical examination whether the author is narrating a real happening or describing a real person, or whether either or both are fictitious, or whether there is a semblance of truth in the description and if so to what extent. It is in this aspect of the historian's arts and crafts that difficulties arise, for the footing he is treading is besides soft for comfort and condom and demands wide experience in enquiry, insight, dexterity or expertness in handling materials of such nature as to brand facile guesses puerile.
Thus, for example, a close study of Rizal's novels, particularly the Noli, reveals that many incidents he narrated and many personalities he described were taken from actual happenings and persons. The incident depicting the plight of Basilio and Crispin was taken from an incident from San Miguel, Bulakan, where the Spanish parish priest acquired the death of a immature sacristan. So scandalous was the incident that the people, frightened though they were, fabricated their silent protests felt, and so that the priest'southward superior was compelled to transfer him to Cavite where, during the Revolution, he was taken prisoner and fabricated to suffer the indignities of a mock bishop. John Foreman, an English Catholic who resided in Manila for near 2 decades, identified the priest as Begetter Piernavieja. This priest, so, became Rizal's model for his Fray Salví and the murdered sacristan for his Crispín.
The other characters in Rizal's novels are types or taken from real life. Fifty-fifty his ain mother may exist discerned in the sometime woman in the church who, during Fray Dámaso's sermon, knocked the head of her grandchild, as described in Chapter XXXI of the Noli; Filósofo Tasio was Rizal's ain brother Paciano; Chinaman Quiroga was Carlos Palanca; Ibarra was Rizal himself; Capitan Tiago was a typical native cacique, so on. In a letter to Felix Resurrección Hidalgo, Rizal said that the incidents he narrated in the Noli were true. "The facts I narrate," he said in the letter, "are all truthful and actually happened. I can prove them." With a frank admission like this, it is not difficult to pinpoint exactly which incidents may be used for historical purposes and which should be discarded as purely imaginary. Only in cases where the author does not indicate the veracity or falsity of the incidents he narrates, the historian's recourse is to read intensively on the menses treated by the author in order to gain an insight into history. If there are survivors of the era, they should be interviewed and if their memory has not failed them their accounts of the period or what they clearly recall of information technology will exist of upper-case letter importance. Thus, for case, when I interviewed the belatedly Lope K. Santos, author of the socialistic novel Banaag at Sikat (1905-1906), regarding his primary characters, he said that the leading lady, Meni, was the belatedly Filomena Francisco (León and Carmen Guerrero's mother), while the hero, Delfín, was himself. On the other mitt, Yoyong the lawyer was Rafael Palma.
More than of import, historically speaking, than the identification of characters in existent life is the social and economical status that the reader gets from the literary works whose importance in this respect increases as documentary show becomes deficient. In the Philippine context, social history nether Spain is extremely hard to write, for the sources for this blazon of historical composition are very few and far between. The gaps separating the periods insofar as documentary evidence on social history is concerned are so wide that 1 has to rely on literary and semi-literary works in society to diminish the distance in time and infinite. Thus, for the social history of the Philippines during the decades earlier 1880, Rizal'due south novels are indispensable.
Less important merely all the same necessary to complete the moving-picture show is Pedro A. Paterno's novelette Ninay (1885) which, though inferior to Rizal's novels from the literary point of view, describes faithfully Filipino customs in the 1880s. The reader, however, is warned non to rely besides much on Paterno's historical works, especially those dealing with pre-Hispanic times, for they vest more to the realm of fiction than to history. Rizal's novels are more reliable than whatsoever of Paterno'south works, for as Rizal himself admitted to his friend, Ferdinand Blumentritt, in a letter written in 1887, "The Filipinos will observe in it [Noli] the history of the last 10 years."
I need not go extensively into the study of Rizal'southward novels in guild to evidence how literature tin exist used every bit materials for the writing of history. Rizal's description of the cabeza de barangay, the meeting at the tribunal, the superstitions of the Filipino religious sisters, the modus operandi of caciques like Capitan Tiago, the clarification of the religious procession, the condition of Binondo, the authorities neglect of public works, the friar mischiefs which led imaginative Filipinos to concoct what I call friar tales which rival those of Boccacio, the smuggling operations of the Chinaman Quiroga, the land of uncomplicated and higher education during the second half of the nineteenth century, the agrarian troubles which extended to recent times, and a hundred other incidents and events necessary in order to understand the history of the Philippines, or at least of the Tagalog region, are materials of history which no historian worth the name tin can ignore. What the documents in the archives and the travelogues of foreigners like Careri, Le Gentil, MacMicking, Jagor, Foreman, Bowring, and many others, exercise not reveal the literary works of gimmicky writers delineate with clarity. The Tagalog poems of the pre- and post- Revolutionary periods tell usa something virtually what the authors felt and idea secretly in language so metaphoric every bit to exist understood by the Spaniards in the Censor's Commission.
No document in the archives describes the existent feelings of the Filipinos during the disquisitional catamenia of revolutionary fervor, and this gap is ably filled past the poems written by Filipinos in the native languages, particularly Tagalog. Francisco Baltazar (1788-1862) was the precursor of these writers, including Rizal, who brought with him to Europe the 1870 edition of Plorante at Laura, for information technology was the poet, who, employing allegory effectively to cover upwardly his real intent and purpose, criticized the sad state of the land and externalized the longings and aspirations of the people in bondage. The importance of Baltazar'southward literary work can exist fully appreciated when one considers that the period, such equally it was, did non envisage liberty of thought and expression. As such, he paved the way for later writers, principal among them being Lopez Jaena, Rizal, and Thou. del Pilar, to make a commitment to the crusade of the people. Although the writers of the Reform Motion were not for independence only just for making the Philippines a province of Kingdom of spain, they nevertheless began a move which, in its negative aspect, culminated in the Revolution of 1896. Information technology is thus clear that the Revolution cannot be clearly understood without whatever cognition of the literature that preceded and followed it.
Side by side with the works of Rizal, Lopez Jaena, del Pilar and the minor writers of the pre-revolutionary era, are the works of Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto whose passion for freedom was accompanied by their weep for independence. Less educated than the reformists, Bonifacio and Jacinto reacted to Castilian misgovernment and cruelty with a fierceness that hardly finds precedence in colonial history. One has only to read Bonifacio'south essay "Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog" (What the Filipinos Should Know) and his poems "Pagibig sa Tinubuang Bayan" (Dear of State), "Tapunan ng Lingap" (Give United states of america Your Beloved), "Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas" (Last Appeal of the Philippines), and "Ang mga Cazadores" (The Cazadores), and Jacinto'south essays Liwanag at Dilim (Light and Darkness) and "Mga Katungkulang Gagawin ng mga Anak ng Bayan" (Duties of the Sons of the People) in order to empathise why the masses plunged into a fell fray against the Spaniards. One is perhaps justified in saying that information technology was literature that fabricated history when the Revolution of 1896 flared upwardly. The events that subsequently unfolded until the coming of the Americans and the consequent Filipino-American war may be better appreciated if the literary works of the menstruation are studied, for collectively they represented the ideals, the aspirations, the house commitment of a people struggling for freedom and independence. The poems of Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Cecilio Apóstol, José Palma, Clemente José Zulueta and others, are historical sources insofar equally their ideological implications are concerned, for they recapitulated, in the measured course of a foreign linguistic communication the unexpressed longings of the Filipinos at the virtually critical period of their history. The literary merits of their works may endure erosion with the passage of time, but their historical significance will remain constant.
With the American period of our history, we take to rely on the literary productions in Tagalog, for it was the writer in Tagalog, not the writer in Spanish, who made literature a rich material for history. It is truthful that the writers in Spanish, particularly Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Rafael Palma, and Teodoro Yard. Kalaw, all of the famous El Renacimiento, made history with their sizzling editorials against the American colonial administrators, especially the Secretary of the Interior, Dean C. Worcester, only their editorials and articulos de fondo were journalistic, not literary, pieces. The Tagalog poets, novelists, and dramatists, now liberated from the bondage of the conscience'due south bluish pencils and writing in the language the new masters did non understand, were conscious of history-in-the-making and wrote literary pieces that portrayed the temper of the period in which they lived.
Thus, Lope K. Santos's socialistic novel, Banaag at Sikat (Rays and Sunrise, 1905-06), describes not simply the status of the menstruum, but also some of the events in Manila, every bit, for instance, the strike of the cigarette-makers and the activities of the newly founded labor unions. On the other paw, Faustino Aguilar's novels, particularly Busabos ng Palad (Slave of Fate, 1909), Pinaglahuan (Eclipsed, 1907), and Nangalunod sa Katihan (Drowned at the Seashore, 1911), are of social and historical significance not merely considering they reflected the thinking of the lower and lower middle form Filipinos of the catamenia but also because they dealt with contemporary social problems, certainly of capital importance in the writing of the history of the early American menstruum of our history.
On the Revolution, Isabelo de los Reyes's Ang Singsing ng Dalagang Marmol (The Band of the Marble Maiden), originally written in Tagalog and translated into Spanish, may be read with profit. In the drama, Patricio Mariano's play, Dalawang Pagibig (Two Loves, 1910) and Severino Reyes'southward Walang Sugat (Non Wounded, 1902), amid many now hardly remembered, requite us an inkling into the late Spanish period, a menstruum remembered primarily because of the accounts of Castilian writers which are incomparably and understandably biased. Those plays and others staged during the beginning years of the American occupation represented Filipino viewpoints and and so serve as a counterpoint to the Spanish views. With the ii sides represented, a counterbalanced overall of the history of the terminal years of Spain in the Philippines may exist had.
Aurelio Tolentino'due south play Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1903) and Juan Abad's Tanikalang Ginto (Golden Chains, 1902) are skillful sources for Filipino reaction to American colonization during the outset decade of the present century. A doctoral dissertation has been written on Filipino reaction to the early American regime, but even a cursory exam of the bibliography shows that the writer relied more than on what the Americans thought was the Filipino response or reaction than on Filipino literary works which expressed most emphatically the real response not only of the élite merely also of the other sectors of the populace. The poems of the period, from approximately 1902 to 1910, cover the whole gamut of feelings and thoughts regarding American intervention in the Philippines, on one manus, and the patriotic élan of the authors, on the other. These literary materials, though ephemeral, have their uses, one of which is to betoken where the Filipino people stood on the question of independence.
Unfortunately, the newspapers and magazines of the catamenia were destroyed during the last state of war and only stray numbers are bachelor in the National Library and in individual collections to remind one that once a time the Philippine periodicals published literary works of perhaps non enduring claim but were notwithstanding crucial to the writing of our history. It is for this and other reasons that the writing of Philippine history and literature, peculiarly of the early American period, is not exactly an circuit into Paradise. This tragedy is deepened past the thought that a few literary works found a haven between covers. Consequently, for a vertical study of the literature of the menstruum to materialize for historical purposes, a scholar must of necessity rely on the periodical literature. This is at present well-nigh impossible insofar as the pre-war journal materials are concerned, for the last war wiped out those vestiges of popular civilization which once delineated in words what the painters did not or failed to capture in color.
From the 1920s onward, the forms of literature that most accurately mirror gimmicky history are poetry and the novel. The poetry of José Corazón de Jesús, particularly his brusk poem and his modern awit, Sa Dakong Silangan (In the East, 1928), and many novels, among them, Servando de Angeles's Ang Huling Timawa (The Last Slave, 1936), Abadilla and Kapulong's Pagkamulat ni Magdalena (Magdalene's Awakening, 1958), Edgardo Reyes'southward Maynila: Sa Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila: From the Claws of Light, 1966), Amado V. Hernandez's Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Casualty, 1969), Celso Ad. Carunungan's Satanas sa Lupa (Satan on Earth, 1971), and others, are rich sources for the history of contemporary life. In Spanish, the works of Jesús Balmori, especially his Vida Manileña which appeared in La Vanguardia, may exist consulted for historical purposes. The Filipino writers in English language, on the other hand, began to wake upward to contemporary history in the years post-obit the last state of war in the Pacific. Juan C. Laya'south This Barangay (1950), Steven Javellana'southward Without Seeing the Dawn (1947), Edilberto Tempo's Watch in the Night (1953), and the other war novels of José N. Aguilar, Magdalena B. Bautista, Agustín T. Misola, Wilfredo N. Nolledo, Augusto Piedad, and Bienvenido N. Santos, all show to the efficacy and validity of literary works as historical sources. What gives credence to these literary works as history is the fact that the authors are contemporaneous with and eyewitnesses of or participants in the events they narrate. Of course, the dialogues are in the primary fictitious. Even so, they may exist used equally historical sources not every bit they are but as they reflected or unsaid the thinking and feeling of the people deeply involved in the grim business of state of war. This thinking and feeling during the war years in the Philippines are non even intimated in official documents, press releases, news items, and speeches, and then the value of those state of war novels and a few poems published in the Japanese-directed newspapers and magazines is enhanced with the passage of time.
In using these literary efforts as sources of history, ane should take intendance not to fall into the error of uncritically accepting everything the literary artist says, for dissimilar the historian, the old's imagination is not express to and restricted by what actually happened. For the literary artist, verisimilitude is plenty to make his work disarming. Consequently, the student of history should use discrimination or discretion in choosing which part of a literary piece of work should be used equally historical material and which function should be eschewed as unhistorical or anti-historical. Generally, literature is valid as a historical source if its description, say, of local color is realistic, that is, it conforms to the bodily condition or atmosphere of a particular time and place. Thus the war novels describe, each in its ain fashion and sphere, the actual condition in several parts of the country during the Japanese occupation, for those who survived the iii-year nightmare testified to the validity and veracity of the description. The fact, too, that the authors were contemporaneous with the events narrated makes their description valid and therefore reliable as historical sources.
Information technology is not suggested, still, that literary works be made the exclusive or fifty-fifty the major sources in the writing of history. What is suggested is that historians should not rely exclusively on documentary bear witness — official reports, gimmicky news items, diaries, memoirs, eyewitness accounts, etc. — but should use literary works as sources of information, particularly in re-creating the atmosphere and local color of a certain time and place. The part of the historian is non merely to recite the events in their proper chronological or logical order, but to brand the past alive and vibrant and, if possible, as colorful as the original events. Literature is thus an ally of the historian in re-creating the past. With the assistance of literature, the historian tin can re-live the past and and so write about it with verisimilitude and confidence. Simply, to succeed in this difficult undertaking, it is not enough that the historian uses literary works as materials in the writing of history; he must take the literary ability to brand the past live once more for the readers. This attribute is some other matter and comes nether the category of history as literature.
*Kickoff published as "When Literature is History," in Archipelago 5: A-47 (1978): 34-37. Published equally "Literature as History," in The Annals of the Philippine Chinese Historical Association, 9th result (October 1979): 1-7.
** Agoncillo, T. A. (2003).History and Civilization, Language and Literature: Selected Essays of Teodoro A. AgoncilloB. R. Churchill (Ed.). University of Sto. Tomas, Manila
Source: https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/teodoro-a-agoncillo/
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