Rizal, father

A few weeks ago, the editor of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Pennie Azarcon de la Cruz, gave me a choice between two topics for their June 19 issue: something on Rizal, or something on fathers. I replied, “Pity Rizal wasn’t a father, so I can combine the two topics.” I ended up doing something about fathers, but with no references to Rizal.

Then last Tuesday at a UP College of Medicine symposium, one of the speakers, Undersecretary Dr. Teodoro Herbosa, (who is a great-grandnephew of Rizal), mentioned that Rizal had a son, named Francisco, who was stillborn.

I nearly fell off my chair. I did my PI 100 (the required university course on Rizal’s life and works) at UP many years ago, and have been reading up on Rizal the last few weeks, but I never read about this son, or at least didn’t notice references to a son.

From Dr. Herbosa and from additional research, I was able to get more facts. The mother of Francisco was Josephine Bracken, who was with Rizal in exile in Dapitan. They were not married because the priest in Dapitan wouldn’t allow them a Catholic wedding.

Rizal and Josephine Bracken went into exile in 1892, but Francisco was not born until 1896. Francisco was apparently born prematurely. Josephine, who was Irish, was said to have preferred the name Peter. The child was buried beneath a hut.

Sadness

Rizal’s exile in Dapitan is usually described in terms of his many accomplishments there, as a physician, an educator, a community developer, even an engineer who developed a safe water supply system. But we forget that all those accomplishments are the more remarkable given the sadness that Rizal must have felt while in exile.

In one of his letters to his best friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal referred to his “Malay wanderlust.” This was a man who had traveled throughout the world, ever curious to discover new cultures and new knowledge. Then this exile to a very poor town. Dogging him were the harshest accusations hurled against him by authorities, of subversion and of heresy. A few months before his exile, a Spanish priest, Fr. Jose Rodriguez, issued a warning to Filipinos titled “Caingat Cayo,” declaring that reading or even possessing Rizal’s “masasamang libro” (evil books) was “casalanang daquila” (a mortal sin), which could mean excommunication.

We get glimpses of Rizal’s heavy heart while he was in Dapitan, in his famous poem “Mi Retiro,” which begins and ends with the same lines, referring to the beauty of the sea and the mountains. But there is, too, a reference to the beauty of nature being “silencio a mi dolor,” silence for grief and pain.

It’s not surprising the late Nick Joaquin took poetic license to rename the poem in English as “Song of the Wanderer,” rather than “My Retreat.” Joaquin’s version has a different beginning, talking of the wanderer (“without north, without soul, without country or love!”) returning home only to find “ice and ruin, perished loves, and graves, nothing more.” The ending is an attempt to be brave: “Begone, wanderer! Look not behind you nor grieve as you leave again. Begone, wanderer: stifle your sorrows! The world laughs at another’s pain.”

Dapitan was a time for Rizal to reflect, deeply, on life and on his convictions, especially concerning religion. He corresponded for a few months with Fr. Pablo Pastells, a Jesuit who had taught at the Ateneo when Rizal was a student. Pastells’ letters were fiery, accusing Rizal of having abandoned Catholicism and coming under the influence of Protestants and Freemasons.

Rizal’s letters are firm but calm, repeating that he believed in a God but not in any religion having a monopoly on truth. Here are two excerpts from his letters showing how Dapitan must have consolidated his beliefs around God:

In a letter dated Jan. 9, 1893, he writes: “I believe firmly in the existence of a Creator more than by faith, by reasoning and by necessity. . . My idea of the infinite is imperfect and confused on seeing His wonderful works, the order that prevails among them, their magnificence and overwhelming extent, and the goodness that shines in everything. . . His thought humbles me, and makes me giddy. ”

Another letter, dated Aril 4, 1893, asks Pastells: “Does not your Reverence believe that men have done wrong in searching for the divine will in parchment and temples instead of searching it in the works of Nature and under the august canopy of the heavens?”

Josephine Bracken

Josephine Bracken must have provided comfort and support for Rizal. They had met in Hong Kong, where Rizal had a clinic. Love blossomed and Josephine returned to the Philippines with Rizal.

Rizal’s relatives were suspicious of Josephine, suspecting she was a Spanish spy. But she stood by him, through Dapitan, through his trial, and into his final days.

I could not find letters from Rizal mentioning the son, and what he and Josephine felt with his premature birth, but I can imagine that they must have been deeply affected. We do know that shortly after the stillbirth, Rizal asked the Spanish government to send him to Cuba, where he could serve as a physician. As he prepared to leave for Cuba, he was said to have burned down the gazebo close to his son’s grave.

Rizal never reached Cuba. He was arrested and put on trial, charged with rebellion. He was acquitted twice, and then condemned to death in a third trial.

Rizal’s fatherhood may seem like a footnote in his life, but I think it should be mentioned more often, if only to highlight what exile meant for him, and how he was able to accomplish so much, in spite of all the trials and tribulations. The son also speaks of a more human side to Rizal, perhaps more domesticated than the wandering gigolo we sometimes see him depicted to be, with a woman in every port. (Yes, I am aware too of the persistent rumors that he sired an Austrian son, sinister as sinister goes.)

The last few days, too, at two Rizal conferences, I have had the privilege of meeting many members of the Rizal family, down to the fifth generation. Rizal did not have direct descendants but many of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his siblings do him proud in the way they continue to propagate Rizal’s memory and legacy of healing the sick and opening new opportunities in education.

Then, too, there is the other aspect of Rizal as the father to a nation, where we all can be his sons and daughters.

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