That was an interesting story that came out here last Friday, the one about another Oblation being unveiled in front of Philippine General Hospital (PGH). The funding came from the University of the Philippines (UP), Manila, the new Oblation being the school’s contribution to UP’s centennial celebration. It picked the PGH rather than the UP Manila campus for its site because the PGH was more accessible to the public.
The new Oblation is a replica of the one on the UP Diliman campus. It was done by Grace Javier Alfonso, UP Open University chancellor and one of only two people (the other being Napoleon Abueva) licensed to cast a mold from the original. The original Oblation was made by Guillermo Tolentino who explained it thus: “The completely nude figure of a young man with outstretched arms and open hands, with tilted head, closed eyes and parted lips murmuring a prayer, with breast forward in the act of offering himself, is my interpretation of that sublime stanza (from Rizal’s ‘Mi Ultimo Adios’). It symbolizes all the unknown heroes who fell during the night. The statue stands on a rustic base, a stylized rugged shape of the Philippine archipelago, lined with big and small hard rocks, each of which represents an island.”
Built at a cost of P1 million, the new Oblation has drawn some mild protest from certain quarters who have wondered why the money was not used instead to improve the facilities of the PGH, which are in dire need of improving. The PGH, they say, could do with a moving elevator rather than an unmoving statue.
I myself do not buy the complaints, figuring that some things elevate more loftily than elevators or move more deeply than contraptions that move. They have more value in the end than seemingly practical ones. This country will not lack for things that need improving, not least the morals of its public officials, and not all the money withheld from artistic undertakings can meet them. (Though all the money withdrawn from corruption should go a long way to doing so.)
The Oblation has a pretty storied tradition, and it does symbolize grand things even for those who did not study in UP. (I am one of those. Someone once asked me, “When did you graduate from UP?” and I answered, “Wrong on both counts.” I studied at the Ateneo de Manila University and did not graduate.) True to Tolentino’s original inspiration, it stood in mute protest against dictatorship during martial law and became a symbol for the countless unknown youth who fell in the night. Of course it also inspired subsequent youth to emulate its form, if not its content, by running around the campus stark naked during Christmas. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you see it, over the years the second has drawn more following than the first.
Having said that, however, I must say as well that I don’t know what value a new Oblation can have that the old one does not already provide. You can’t have an Oblation in every UP branch, and even if you could or were willing to settle for a smaller version, what on earth for? I have no quibbles with artistic undertakings taking away from practical things (truly, man does not live by bread alone), but I have a quibble with some artistic undertakings more than others.
The way I see it, what we need right now are less monuments in physical space and more monuments in our minds and hearts, which are really their best location. Symbols have always had two curious effects in our lives. One is to inspire us, as the Oblation has inspired the university student newspaper Collegian and the Diliman Commune. Two is to reduce us to tokenism, the symbol substituting for the reality, or the ritual substituting for the practice, the way self-flagellation on Good Friday makes up for raping and murdering the rest of the year. We have far too many laws and far too little law. We have far too many monuments to great deeds and (at least lately) far too few monumentally great deeds.
As it is, all the Oblation, old or new, now seems to symbolize is not someone lifting up his arms in sublime surrender to the will of God or history but someone looking up askance and heaven and asking, “What the hell has happened to us?” How is it possible that a people who have produced two People Power uprisings could so blithely wallow in indifference and swallow every bit of injustice that come their way? How is it possible that a people who have produced Jose Rizal and the countless young men who have flung themselves in all their nakedness into the fire could so easily forget their sacrifices, muttering piously, what can we do, s--t happens, let’s move on?
As symbols go, we can always take our cue from Muntadhar al-Zeidi who has shown that the most appropriate, elegant and poetic symbols do not have to cost P1 million. They have to cost only, well, the price of his symbol has since gone up, to the delight of its makers, no small thanks to him. Al-Zeidi is the journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush while the latter sought to remind the world of his legacy. Al-Zeidi helped him do so, though giving that legacy quite another spin, by shouting “Here’s your goodbye kiss, you dog,” while hurling his missiles. Those shoes have since become the epitaph of the Bush administration. It has also not quite incidentally done more to unite the Arab world than any exhortation in the name of Allah or alliances.
Frankly, I’m still looking for a comparable expression of contempt in our culture for the current ruler’s legacy. But the point is simple. Symbols are only as good as they capture or articulate the mood or spirit of a time. Or symbols are only as good as they resonate in life in deeds. The more lasting monuments are not those that lie outside us, they are those that lie inside.
It’s all in the mind, as a friend says. And, of course, heart. In more ways than one.
