ABOUT THE WORK

The ‘Noli’ is certainly the most important book in Philippine history, igniting our revolution that was also Asia’s first democratic struggle. It was this book (and its sequel, the ‘Fili’) that caused Andres Bonifacio and an entire generation to venerate Rizal and rise up in the name of the free Philippines for which he longed. José Rizal would pay dearly for the effect his twin novels had : He would be led out to the killing fields of the Luneta and shot on 30 December 1896. It would be a martyrdom that would ensure his place as the Philippines’ National Hero. In a world today dominated by small screens, it’s hard to imagine exactly how influential a book such as the ‘Noli’ was. And yet, in the 1880s, when the book first arrived in the Philippines, it was nothing short of sensational. The Noli was not merely banned, it was also confiscated and consigned to the flames. (This would account for the fact that so few copies of the first edition have survived.) Its owners could be charged with insurrection and sent to jail. When the Rizal family’s luggage was searched by the Secret Police, upon his arrival from a long exile in Dapitan, a copy of the ‘Noli’ was purportedly found, proof positive of his unrepentant and continuing infidelity to the Spanish Crown. He would later be arrested and sent to Fort Santiago to await trial and a death sentence. Gen. Carlos Romulo, writing in the New York Times about the Noli’s latest translation by Leon Ma. Guerrero, said, “I come from a small town in the hills of Tarlac on the island of Luzon. How this book affected the townfolk of Camiling in the 1880s was described by my father — in an article published in 1908 in El Renacimiento, a nationalist paper printed in Manila : ‘There was only one copy of the ‘Noli’ in town. *** I borrowed it and for three successive evenings, I read it out loud to my wife, mother, and some relatives. Rizal seemed to be speaking to us. He wrote of things we knew, which we experienced. The characters were familiar to us and the wrongs and injustices he described we also suffered and endured. ‘The ‘Noli’ went from house to house, secretly of course. That is how the whole poblacion (town) read the book. ‘The ‘Noli’ expressed for us what we all felt. It gave us for the first time a feeling of oneness, because we have also been the victims of injustices and excesses described in it. It was as if Rizal was writing of our own town. When the country rose in arms against Spain, Camiling was one of the first to answer the call. ‘Multiply Camiling into the hundreds of other small towns in the Philippines — and one can see how the ‘Noli’ moved our people to write a new chapter in our history.’ The ‘Noli’ and the ‘Fili’ were, quite simply, the gospels of Filipino Nationalism. In explaining the purpose of his novel, he said : “I was aiming at the friars, but since they were shielding themselves in the rites and superstitions of a certain religion, I had to free myself from it in order to strike at the enemy behind it.*** Those who abused its name must bear the responsibility.” — Lisa Guerrero Nakpil