IT'S XIAOTIME!

Prof. Michael Charleston “Xiao” Chua, Ph.D., Historian (COS), National Library of the Philippines

The National Library of the Philippines is delighted to present to the nation a more affordable facsimile copy of one of our greatest documents, José Rizal’s original manuscript of the Noli Me Tangere, which is in the possession of this institution and through the initiative of the NLP Director Cesar Gilbert “Jet” Q. Adriano is now displayed in the new NLP Permanent Gallery along with other important documents of our nationhood.

Penguin Classics dubbed the novel as the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance against European colonialism.  But many credited the novel, and its creation, as one of those that helped us become a nation.  According to Setsuho Ikehata and Benedict Anderson, Rizal helped the indios throughout the archipelago realize they had a common misfortune. They may not have read the novels themselves, but those who did told others about Ibarra, Maria Clara, Elias, Sisa, Crispin and Basilio, Padre Salvi, Padre Damaso, Doña Victorina, and others.

From being mere Tagalogs, Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Kapampangans, Bicolanos, etcetera, we developed a common national sentiment and were able to identify with each other and finally see our problems in our own lens, which eventually united us and urged us to fight.

Rizal went to Europe in 1882 to actually fulfill a dream project that would write about the culture and history of the Philippines with his friends, the ilustrados.  But them seem to not be interested.  Frustrated, by the end of 1884, Rizal embarked on fulfilling the mission himself. He had already begun writing what would become his first novel in Madrid, then in Paris in 1885 and then in Wilhelmsfeld, Germany, by April to June 1886. He made in the Noli a study of the contemporary society of that time and fictionalized it.  There was the story of a bell-ringer who was reportedly killed under the care of Father Antonio Piernavieja’s sacristan in San Rafael, Bulacan, which became the story of Crispin.  There was the story of a bell-ringer who was reportedly killed under the care Father Antonio Piernavieja, which became the story of Crispin.  There was also the story of Sor Josefa Estrada de San Rafael of San Simon, Pampanga, who, in 1881, was seen at the top of the Franciscan Abbey of Sta. Clara in Manila after she was molested by a priest.  This became the “mad nun” at the postscript of the novel, believed to be Maria Clara.

But although the characters were caricatures, they reflected the reality of the ill effects of colonialism, demonstrating the role of the artist and social scientist in the making of the nation. Hoping it would help change people’s minds. 

In Berlin, he struggled to correct his manuscript in the midst of winter. He felt sick and thought he had tuberculosis. By Christmas, Dr. Maximo Viola came and examined him and concluded that Rizal’s assumptions were wrong. Rizal was only undernourished.

Aside from his health, Rizal worried about how he could pay for the printing of his book. He asked his brother Paciano for 300 pesos for the printing, but it all went to food and lodging. In a letter to a friend, he said later that he did not believe his book would ever be published. “I was on the point of throwing my work into the fire as a thing accursed and fit only to die,” he wrote.

Viola, who gave the depressed man some money for his expenses, also offered to pay for the whole cost of printing 2,000 copies to a reluctant Rizal. He finally agreed to accept 300 pesos as a loan rather than a gift.

At the cost of a lot of personal sacrifices on the part of the author, the Noli Me Tangere was published on March 21, 1887 in Berlin. The first copies were sent to the author’s friends and was received well. He was only 25 years old.

But the person who could be considered the first external reviewer of his self-published work was the printer’s man himself. Rizal’s biographer Austin Coates wrote: “Though no one in the printing house spoke proper Spanish, they had realized that the work they were producing was dynamite. To Rizal and Viola, the printer’s man expressed the view that if the author of the book were to go back to the Philippines his fate would certainly be—and he drew his hand across his gullet.”  After nine years, Rizal was executed by the Spaniards.

Looking at the manuscript itself tells us a few more contexts:  Ambeth Ocampo said that the signatures you will see at the side of the pages of manuscript would remind us of the role of German women in transcribing it for printing.  To also cut cost, he did not include one chapter in the publication—“Elias and Salome”—but is still here, indicated by long lines in the side of its pages.

In 1912, an English translation of the novel by Charles Derbyshire was named The Social Cancer and not the literal translation of the Latin, “Touch me not.”  Rizal wrote Félix Resurrección Hidalgo in 1887 saying that the title Noli me Tangere were taken from the Gospels.  But what is it not to be touched?  Rizal’s dedication for his country reads, “Recorded in the history of human suffering are cancers of such malignant character that even minor contact aggravates them, engendering overwhelming pain…. Therefore, because I desire your good health… I will do with you what the ancients did with their infirmed: they placed them on the steps of their temples so that each in his own way could invoke a divinity that might offer a cure.”

So, it is a cancer.  Later, I read from old medical books that the “Noli me Tangere” itself is actually a name of a skin cancer in the eyelids also called lupus erythematosus. 

Rizal, the ophthalmic surgeon, knew that the ills he exposed on the steps of the temple that he wanted to cure would just explode. Rizal hoped that when it did, Spain would finally listen and offer reforms. But the opposite happened. Once the cancer was exposed, revolution was inevitable.

I also believe that Rizal’s use of an ophthalmic term reminds us that deeper than colonialism, perhaps, one of the main problems of the Filipino is a problem of perception, of seeing their history and culture in colonial eyes, and the refusal to see societal problems.  Because the novel was not just about the ills of colonialism, but it was also about our faults:  our own colonial mentality, of how Filipina women allowed themselves to be enslaved, of our tendencies to be weak and submissive.  Rizal was waking us up and warning us of the things we allowed ourselves to have become.  Which makes Maria Clara not a model Filipino woman, but a warning.

Recent history proved that after more than a century, Filipinos still rally around Rizal and his works.  After the bitter divisions of the 2022 presidential elections, people from all political camps talked about the country once again, together, around the hit television series shown in Netflix “Maria Clara at Ibarra.”  Truly, Rizal is almost the one thing most Filipinos will agree upon and we realize further how he is still relevant in the Netflix generation.

Lastly, may this facsimile copy remind you, like Rizal’s flowing handwriting therein, that the Noli was written as a satire. Its deep context make it seem like it’s a sacred text, but it is really meant to be enjoyed.