A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino
-Nick Joaquin
(An Elegy in Three Scenes)
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
-Yeats
Lugsong's Personal Notes:
This is rather a personal take of the Drama/Play coupled with some readings. You may not necessarily share my thoughts but, it is my hope that this blog entry be of assistance to you.
The play focuses on family conflict and the amalgamation of old Filipino identity and cultural character with the arrival of contemporary and Western ideals. It is my personal notion that when we choose to forget who we are as a nation, as a people, and as an individual that we finally loose all that is left in us- our identity and our ability to choose. If we decide to forget our individuality and the tradition and lessons of the generations before us, we have decided to become slaves again in our country in a very “modern” time.
One of the ideas in the play that struck me the most if its theme on tradition and personal beliefs and the identification to it as well as the willingness to stand by it, and if need be- die for it. In the generation to which I belong, consumerism had taken a great part of the soul of the people. One’s importance is often associated with one’s usability. It might sound so ideal, but I like the idealism of Joaquin. One must fight for the things/people that he/she loves so that it would survive. As Bitoy puts it, only when one chooses to remember that one never forgets, and through his song/ storytelling, one can always remember those which matter most.
I believe, the choice of Sir Joaquin on the time of the third scene if deliberate. Second Sunday of October is the Feat of Our Lady of Naval, the Virgin whom the faithful believe to be the responsible in Manila’s security. I personally think this choice was made to make the viewers of the play reflect on the redemption of one’s soul and dignity and what its cost.
Furthermore, the painting which depicts the young Marasigan carrying an old Marasigan (both faces bear the face of the artist) like the image of Aeneas carrying Anchises, one can think of a man’s burden. Although we are living in shared humanity, a lot of our troubles and the path to redemption is a burden and a road only the individual can travel. No one can carry it for himself but himself, for example, the guilt we are having for neglecting a duty and the likes. Its universal appeal, I believe is the trouble and fear it brings to the onlookers. The portrait as I understand the Drama, I a mirror that lets us view our greatest nemesis- ourselves.
I hope you enjoy the play through the guidance of the notes that follows:
Background of the
Drama-
The Portrait was
written shortly after the Japanese Occupation and the Battle of Manila but
remained unacted for several years. Then in 1950’s it was produced by Lamberto
V. Avellana and his “Dramatic Philippines” in an open-air production with the
ruined walls of Intramuros for background. The play was an instant success and
it has been performed many times since, both in English and Tagalog
translation. IT has also been produced as a film under Avellana’s direction. IN
1976, Nick Joaquin was awarded the tile of “National Artist” (Tiempo, Bernad,
& Tiempo, 1977).
The Scenes –
First Scene: The sala of the Marasigan house in
Intramuros. An afternoon toward the beginning of October, 1941.
Second Scene: The same. A week later. Late in the morning.
Third Scene: The same. Two days later. Afternoon of the
Second Sunday of October.
The People –
Candida & Paula Marasigan, spinster daughters of Don Lorenzo
Pepang, their elder married sister
Manolo, their eldest brother
Bitoy Camacho, a friend of the family
Tony Javiet, a lodger at the Marasigan house
Pete, a Sunday Magazine editor
Eddie, a writer
Cora, a news photographer
Susan & Violet, vaudeville artists
Don Pedrico, a senator
Doña Loleng, his wife
Patsy, their daughter
Elsa Montes & Charlie Dacanay, friends of Doña Loleng
Don Alvaro & Doña Upeng, his wife
Don Pepe friends
of Marasigans
Don Miguel & Doña Irene, his wife
Don Aristeo
A Watchman
A Detective
Two Policemen
Summary:
“A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino” is set in pre-war Intramuros,
from which Bitoy Camacho, the central character, revisits the house of
Marasigans, recounting the good old days — from the Friday tertulias (social
gatherings) at the living room to the sweet tooth experience shared with Paula
and Candida Marasigan — the daughters of Don Lorenzo Marasigan, the most
sought-after artist of “Retrato del Artista Como Filipino.”
Although he knows what the masterpiece means
in another language, Bitoy does not know why it was created.
He only knows it at the surface, not underneath its hues and strokes. The
daughters of the painter explain that both the old and young man is their
father — Don Marasigan, who is in bed since he finished the Portrait.
Intentions emerge when Bitoy has come clean
he is a journalist working for a story about the Portrait, to which the sisters
confessed they are saturated by them all — the flashes of the camera, swishes
of the quill, chatters of the privy reporters.
The Portrait is rather personal, dedicated
to both Paula and Candida. Despite their admission, the Marasigan sisters
credit the Portrait’s universal value, situating that maybe that is the reason
people want to peek; people want to connect with the artist; people want to hang
it on the wall of their houses; people want to see it on the front page of the
broadsheet. Or maybe it is subversive, for Candida recalls a Frenchman urging
the “government to confiscate this painting right away.” (Dungan 2018)
The two spinsters upon learning of the real
intentions of Bitoy have retreated to their shells, and when reminded of the
future that they would have away from each other (each will be sheltered by the
two older siblings) they decided to find ways of supporting themselves. Both Pepang
and Manolo are finding the arrangement of keeping the old house and the fiunces
attached to it and the seeing over their own family’s financial needs now. Both
older siblings wish to sell the portrait and finally get rid of the house. But
the two spinsters are stubborn and would not give up so easily. At first it was
not clear to the older siblings why they were acting that way until the
spinsters have blurted the encounter they had with their father regarding the
burden of being left in the house tasked to look after him. After that
incident, the old man did not go out of the room, after a few days he presented
them the portrait and later on jumped off the balcony. The two spinsters
therefore believe it would atone their sin to their father if they keep the
portrait and continue serving him.
As the drama progresses, the portrait was
destroyed. This act by Candida was the final and cautious releasing of a soul
that is long chained by the consumerism that has engulfed the people around
Candida and Paula.
In the end, the portrait was gone and so is
the house in Intramuros. “The house of Don Lorenzo el Magnifico. This piece of
wall, this heap of stones, are all that’s left of it. It finally took a global
war to destroy this house and the three people who fought for it. Though they
were destroyed, they were never conquered. They were still fighting – right to
the very end- fighting against the jungle. They are dead now- Don Lorenzo,
Candida, Paula – they are all dead now – a horrible death- by sword and fire…
they died with their house and they died with their city – and maybe its just
as well they did. They could never have survived the death of old Manila. And
yet – listen- it is not dead; it has not perished! Listen, Paula! Listen,
Candida! Your city – my city – the city of our fathers – still lives! Something
of it is left; something of it survives, and will survive, as long as I live
and remember – I who have known and loved and cherished these things!”
The drama ended with Bitoy still in his
soliloquy saying “Oh Paula, Candida- listen to me! By your dust, and by the
dust of all the generations, I promise to continue, I promise to preserve! The
jungle may advance, the bombs may fall again – but while I live, you live and
this dear city of our affections shall rise again – if only in my song! To
remember and to sing: that is my vocation . . . “
Filling in the silence after the bombshell
comes the entrance of another important character: Tony Javier who, as the
Marasigan sisters confirmed, is a lodger in their house and is an artist who
wishes to advance his stagnant career.
Javier steals the scene with his
melodramatic soliloquy, exclaiming: “So he (Don Lorenzo) is a great man. So,
he’s a great painter. So, he fought in the Revolution. And so, what?” He paces
his breath, “What the hell is he now? Just a beggar! And he has the nerve to
look down on me!”
By the time Javier finished his ramblings,
Bitoy’s colleagues have arrived — swarming like insects toward a prized object:
The Portrait.
The elegy, at this point, begs the audience
to make them feel as if Portrait were dynamic; Joaquin’s
appeal worked. It is evident in the introduction of new cameos, which thickened
the layer of the narrative.
Moreover, the award-winning writer in the
first part asserts that the Marasigan house is the beginning and the end. It is
where Portrait’s climax and resolution would happen, bringing about
a notion of claustrophobia.
Commentaries
Perhaps it is the poetry in it, the subtle,
unspoken pain of the genteel poor of Old Manila struggling to survive in a
world their genteel past never anticipated. It is pre-war Manila, just before
the bombs fell in 1944, (Castillo, 2012).
“Art is not autonomous; Art should not stand aloof from mundane
affairs; Art should be socially significant; Art has a function… Like making
people brush their teeth… Now he must emphasize the contrast between the wealth
of artistic material lying all about us and the poverty of the local artist’s
imagination.” This is Joaquin’s idea/definition of art as embodied by the three
other journalists who had visited the house in Intramuros. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who are known
for their idea of Communism, would back the account of Joaquin’s characters,
for both thinkers had claimed that the universality of an object determines its
use for everyone. The three journalists further: “[A] Work of Art…belongs to
the people! It belongs to the whole world,” strengthening Portrait’s
parallelism with Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. (Dungan,2012)
Dungan(2012) further noted
that another recurring theme in Portrait is the separation between the sciences
and the arts. Senator Perico’s arrival to the second scene has visualized this
divide, in which he generated a debate among the Marasigan sisters and himself.
“Life is not so simple as it is in Art,” argued
Perico, after Candida said: “the sublime is always ridiculous to the world.”
This tension implies that the house, where the Portrait resides,
brings back memories of the senator’s past as a poet. Doña Loleng, the Perico’s
wife, in one instance interjects that her husband has “caught a flu.” We,
Joaquin’s words suggest, cannot have the life we want both ways.
Aside from the science-art faction, the penultimate part of
Joaquin’s play also referenced the criticism mentioned in the previous scene,
holding:
To feel that…necessity to write poetry, a poet needs an audience;
he must be conscious of an audience — not only of a present audience but of a
permanent one, an eternal one, an audience of all the succeeding generations.
he must feel that his poems will generate new poets.
The farther we see fragments of the portrait, the more, it seems,
we notice the cracks of the painting at the surface. It is not just beauty that
the picture evokes, but also madness.
Joaquin sure did not orchestrate Portrait’s turning-point just to
taunt us. He intended to ensnare us in a confronting truth not just about his
characters, but also about ourselves. That, despite our differences, we dream.
That our ambitions might one day die — or be resurrected — due to circumstances
called reality, outliving the person we pictured ourselves of becoming. That,
in spite of hopelessness, we will soon come to terms with the irreversible
simulation of anything except the abstract; and it is fine. (Dungan, 2012)
