José Rizal: reformist or revolutionary?
Part two: Nightmares in a Parisian hotel, Isang Panaginip na Fili

By By Carlos A. Arnaldo, KGOR, Supreme Archivist


Fri 17th June 2011




(photos from the playbill and website of Dulaang UP)

Isang Panaginip na Fili is perhaps best described as shock treatment. It is an historical musical drama composed and directed by Floy Quintos and staged by Dulaang UP last November and December 2010.




Yes, shock treatment, for it is quite a shock to hear a melodious musical, with dramatic highs and tearful lows, with angered shouts and bladed menace, with reddened outrage at holy church for raping our young girls, with brow-furrowed reflection on possibilities driven by bloodstained imperatives of the moment and fears of an anticipated future of repression. It is almost as shocking to realize that one really can really enjoy this kind of very historical drama where, all of a sudden, the cardboard stiff characters of dusty books come alive in a human tussle of romance and subversion, of joy and fear, of aspiration and doom.





Spanish words mixed in the lyrics of this musical take on special meaning when voiced by the Greek-like chorus of the illustrados, Cuidado, cuidado! Lyrics and music take on quite another twist in Tagalog, when the chorus of peasants warn, Malapit na, malapit na! And in between Castilla and Tagalog, prance the sandaled friars offering forgiveness, protection, and even intimate protection in the bosom of their sweat satined soutanasprotection from whom?





Director Floy Quintos concept was not at all to present the novel of the Fili, banal and perhaps even boring in a musical. His mission went further, to test the mettle of the author, Rizal, against the acid bite of his own characters, in the very moments of his writing the novel and creating Simoun, Ibarra, Isagani, Juli, Basilio, Sisa, Kabesang Tales. It was as if, once started off in the early chapters, the characters came into their own, drew out their own personality, and in many instances transformed themselves as the novel progressed. In effect, one might almost say, the musical is about the characters telling Rizal how to write the book!

Aside from presenting humorous and provoking scenes, the dialog thus starts to hone the characters and one begins to see the nuances of each one, weaknesses as well as fortes.

This episode of his life, in the throes of reformism and revolution, while meticulously documented by Dr Hlne Goujat, is brilliantly and graphically portrayed in Isang Panaginip na Fili. It expressed perfectly Rizals tension between being the prophet of non-violent reform and the philosopher, inspirer of revolution, the very same thesis as Goujat.





It is 1891, in Paris. The curtain opens to present Rizal holed up in a small hotel, trying to finish the Fili, but tormented by dreams, or nightmares on how to complete this work and write now what he failed to write in the Noli. He is stunned by echoes of the chorus chanting Cuidado, Cuidado, Cuidado kayo diyan! beware, beware, beware the friars and their lies, beware the guardia civil and their oppressions. Should he write more in revolutionary terms? He is continuously egged on and perturbed by his fictional roommate, Tunying Ibaez who also portrays the Fili character Simoun, who in reality is the once modest Ibarra of the Noli, now transformed, and hot for action




In the first part, I started this article with Cabesang Tales. And here in Paris, in the writing of the Fili, Tales now approaches Rizal, I have arms, I can fight, I can join the struggle, why should I hesitate, to lead other peasants in an uprising? Should Rizal harden this kindly farmer and turn him into an insurrecto? One might almost glimpse an insight into the rabid, daring Andres Bonifacio when faced with the equally rabid and daring menaces of Kabesang Tales, especially when Greg de Leons baritone voices rings out above the clashing chorus.

Juli, a personage whose outlines are so barely traced by Rizal, in Panaginip, evolves from a faithful nobia, to a plaything of the friars.





Ibarra of the Noli, returns now as Simoun, the jewel merchant. He has always shown himself to be modest and controlled, even when insulted and aggrieved by the friars who make fun of his father and prevented his Christian burial because they accused him of heresy. Would he himself now take up arms?




Tunying Ibaez, his fictional roommate in the drama and alter-ego of the Fili character, Simoun, was perhaps most instrumental in revolutionizing the writer.




The friars, also darkly enrobed in the turbulence of the choral and musical tempest, show their ugliest as oppressors of the poor, adamant administrators of land and collectors of rentals, rapists of poor peasant women. Did they not enrage Rizal all the more to become himself a filibusterero? In 1891, while he was still here in this hotel, they had seized his lands and evicted his family and 300 of their tenants. Could he still not turn his pen into a blade?






In the end, in the drama, that is, most of the Fili characters win out in radicalizing Rizal the reformist. But in reality too, one finds in the Fili and in Rizals actions after his return to the Philippines in 1892, that he has definitely evolved in his thinking and beliefs. He has become a believer in his own book, El Filibusterismo, The Revolutionary.