Sa Panahong "Masagwa"

If I am not careful, I will forget that I have a blog. Hello! Peak freelance season and I need to manage my time really well. Just yesterday, I was at the PBS again because we are starting to review the style of the NFSB, to see whether it is “literary” and “liturgical.” I know a little about the “liturgical” part, but I feel more confident commenting at what is “literary” or not “literary”. Funny thing was that I went to the meeting expecting that they would tell me what I should do but the senior translation consultant who read the final committee draft, Bishop Arichea, joked that it is I who was supposed to tell them how we were to proceed with the style check. At the rate we’re going, he said, we might finish this translation in ten or twenty years which was the length of time it took for the NIV to get done. I shuddered at the thought until the Bishop chuckled that this job can’t take too long because we don’t have the budget of the NIV committee.

It turned out that I’m going to be editor for “sound” and “feel” to put it very simply. (My friends -- they are very kind -- have always affirmed me saying that I’m first a poet before anything else but only God knows how qualified I am to do a style check.) We went through the first four chapters of Matthew and we agreed that some portions needed a tweak here and there. Bishop was stern in saying we should not touch the exegetical decisions already made. For all of us, exegetical decisions mean translations made and agreed upon by the committee after months of reading and studying the original Greek text (NT). Although I was impressed at the committee draft, we still needed to go through three pages of my comments -- one by one. Happily, we finished working through the comments right before our late lunch. In the can are the books of the apostle John and Galatians, books which are non narratives but expository, therefore more difficult to process than chapters 1-4 of Matthew, which is story-genre.

This afternoon, I went to the UST library to look at several essays on Tagalog written and compiled by the Ateneo Press (old books). I decided on the UST library because at 3 PM, Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, National Artist for Literature 2006, was supposed to lead a forum on “Nationalism and Literature.” I had more or less an idea how that forum would go, (and I was right), but I was disappointed that Dr. Bien was not able to make it to the forum because he was sick. I was looking forward to meeting with him and consulting with him regarding my site. He was the main reason why I stayed another day in Manila. I received a lot of encouragement in my writing from this great man of Philippine literature when he was my professor in playwriting. Well anyway, I just comforted myself by reading and photocopying his early essays which I secured from the reserved section of the UST library.

Another National Artist, Virgilio Almario, sat among the panelists composed of Dr. Guillermo of UP, and Professor Ruby (she read the paper of Soledad Reyes). The forum did not say anything new, but it emphasized that, especially at this time, which, according to Rio Alma, is not “Panahon ng Sigwa” but “Panahong Masagwa,” editors, mentors, professors, textbook writers, critics, should guide the young writers toward a right response to the times (how the country and the people are). He told the story of a nineteen year old writer during the American period, who wrote a very straightforward anti-American novel. The writer, Ismael Amado, was discouraged to publish his novel at that very crucial time because Inigo Regalado, an older Tagalog novelist, told him to be careful. Later on, that novel was published with an introduction by Inigo Regalado, but since it was already the time of American hegemony, the novel had already become irrelevant. Almario noted that had that novel been published at the exact time it should have been published, then maybe, Ismael Amado would have turned out to be another Rizal. Almario’s point was that the critic informants – older professors, editors, mentors, textbook writers, cannot be cynical about the times, because their being cynical is passed on to the youth who, in turn, become indifferent and indecisive about the situation of the Filipino people in general. If the young writers are indifferent to the times, then who else will articulate our people’s frustrations and aspirations, our disappointments and our hopes?

The paper of Soledad Reyes, a foremost critic of Philippine letters, started out by underscoring the need to study popular culture as a medium that may help usher into the minds of its large followers what nationalism truly is. But the paper was not really able to recommend anything and instead just talked about the usual divide between formalistic and marxist perspectives in literary criticism, as in the old debates.

Dr. Bien being absent, I resisted thinking I lost a day of editing and translation by going to this forum. But when I faced my computer tonight, and saw at least four emails telling me that I should work fast or I won’t meet my deadlines, I allowed myself to feel a little cheated.