It seems to be desirable for the natives that the above-mentioned views should not speedily become accomplished facts, because their education and training hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them successfully to compete with either of the other two energetic, creative, and progressive nations. They have, in truth, dreamed away their best days.”
Page 99This prophecy of Jagor’s made a deep impression upon Rizal and seems to furnish the explanation of his life work. Henceforth it was his ambition to arouse his countrymen to prepare themselves for a freer state. He dedicated himself to the work which Doctor Jagor had indicated as necessary. It seems beyond question that Doctor Rizal, as early as 1876, believed that America would sometime come to the Philippines, and wished to prepare his countrymen for the changed conditions that would then have to be met. Many little incidents in his later life confirm this view: his eagerness to buy expensive books on the United States, such as his early purchase in Barcelona of two different “Lives of the Presidents of the United States”; his study of the country in his travel across it from San Francisco to New York; the reference in “The Philippines in a Hundred Years”; and the studies of the English Revolution and other Anglo-Saxon influences which culminated in the foundation of the United States of America.
The Books that remain from Rizal’s library.
| Rizal’s carving of the Sacred Heart. |
Besides the interest he took in clay modeling, to which reference has already been made, Rizal was expert in carving. When first in the Ateneo he had carved an image Page 100of the Virgin of such grace and beauty that one of the Fathers asked him to try an image of the Sacred Heart. Rizal complied, and produced the carving that played so important a part in his future life. The Jesuit Father had intended to take the image with him to Spain, but in some way it was left behind and the schoolboys put it up on the door of their dormitory. There it remained for nearly twenty years, constantly reminding the many lads who passed in and out of the one who teachers and pupils alike agreed was the greatest of all their number, for Rizal during these years was the schoolboy hero of the Ateneo, and from the Ateneo came the men who were most largely concerned in making the New Philippines. The image itself is of batikulin, an easily carved wood, and shows considerable skill when one remembers that an ordinary pocketknife was the simple instrument used in its manufacture. It was recalled to Rizal’s memory when he visited the Ateneo upon his first return from Spain and was forbidden the house by the Jesuits because of his alleged apostasy, and Page 101again in the chapel of Fort Santiago, where it played an important part in what was called his conversion.
| Bust of Father Guerrico, S. J., modeled from memory by Rizal. Now in the Ateneo, Manila. |
The proficiency he attained in the art of clay modeling is evidenced by many of the examples illustrated in this volume. They not only indicate an astonishing versatility, but they reveal his very characteristic method of working—a characteristic based on his constant desire to adapt the best things he found abroad to the conditions of his own country. The same characteristic appears also in most of his literary work, and in it there is no servile imitation; it is careful and studied selection, adaptation and combination. For example, the composition of a steel engraving in a French art journal suggested his model in clay of a Philippine wild boar; the head of the subject in a painting in the Luxembourg Gallery and the rest of a figure in an engraving in a newspaper are combined in a statuette he modeled in Brussels and sent, in May, 1890, to Valentina Ventura in place of a letter; a clipping from a newspaper cut is also adapted for his model of “The Vengeance of the Harem”; and as evidence of his facility of expressing himself in this medium, his clay modeling of a Dapitan woman may be cited. One day while in exile he saw a native woman clearing up the street in front of her home preparatory to a festival; the movements and the attitudes of the figure were so thoroughly typical and so impressed themselves on his mind that he worked out this statuette from memory. Page 102
A composite statuette by Rizal: the head from a painting in the Luxembourg (shown in upper right-hand corner), the rest from an engraving.