A stranger no more
By Fernando Almeda Jr. / May 25, 2006
THE
lost poet I wrote about and the author of that poem I printed here last
week is Virgilio F. Florencio. He was born on April 29, 1908, but died
in Cantilan, Surigao del Sur, on January 1944 at age 36 just when the
dawn of liberation was breaking during World War II.
A
few of us who studied in the 1950s will probably remember him if they
bothered to read the "Philippine Prose and Poetry." Along with the
works of other literary giants of a lost golden generation, Floresca’s
epic poem entitled: "The Battle of Mactan" occupies a prominent
presence there.
He
wrote another war epic entitled: "The Battle of Agincourt" but "Mactan"
is by far his most popular work. This won the prestigious Commonwealth
award for poetry before the war and arguably made him the "Poet
Laureate" of the Philippines. Then, he disappeared.
It
turned out that love had bewitched him. He ended up in my hometown of
Cantilan after he married one of its beautiful maidens there named
Juanita Almeda whom the poet affectionately called "Janet," although
she was locally known as ‘‘Juaning.’’ Yes. She was my Auntie. So that
made Virgilio my uncle.
After
graduation from High School in 1956, the only poetic lines I could
really memorize were these lines from "Mactan": "He saw in the eyes of
hate, the darkness of his faith as he laid in wait" describing the last
conscious moment of Magellan as Lapu-Lapu standing over him in the
shores of historic Mactan was about to deliver the fatal coup de grace
to his fallen, arrogant, Spanish foe. The other lines were from
Archibald MacLEISH’s ARS Poetica: "An open doorstep, a maple leaf"
which speaks of the eerie loneliness of abandonment and decay of homes,
palaces and even civilizations. Remember "the glory that was Greece and
the grandeur that was Rome"?
I’ve
always wondered what happened and where did all Floreca’s poems go.
More important, I kept asking who he was? This went on for some 50
years. But I never let go of my search. I knew I would soon find him
and some of those lost literary treasures.
Then,
by a happenstance and the strange magic of serendipity, a friend of
mine had guests from Manila recently and needed company for civilized
conversation over suman and puto with green mangoes. I did rise to the
occasion despite my serious sense of humor. As it turned out, his
distinguished visitor, married to someone from Cagayan de Oro, was a
real flesh and blood poet who had a book of poems to his credit and is
possibly one of the leading, living Filipino poets today. He has a
Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago and is a professor at
the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University
of the Philippines. Good company, indeed: He’s Dr. Gemino H. Abad.
Imagine his surprise when I told him that way pabor pabor
my favorite Filipino poet was and is my uncle: Virgilio F. Floresca. I
told him about my long, seemingly endless, search for this lost poet
and his works not knowing if he knew him or even cared at all. Eureka!
After a few days, here’s portion of a letter I got from ‘‘Jimmy,’’ as
the professor is known to his friends:
"
I still regret my ignorance, I could have met with Juanita Almeda! I
have (some) poems of Floresca. They were collected by my research
Assistant from magazines in the ‘30s."
The
few poems of Floresca are thus in my treasure chest at last, courtesy
of ‘‘Jimmy.’’ More will come because the existing poems of Floresca are
compiled in a work entitled "Man of the Earth" (Ateneo University
Press, 1989) including the bio-sketch and notes. But sadly enough,
hundreds or even more than a thousand of his other poems are lost
forever, especially the sonnets he wrote in Domolog (actually Domoyog
because we prefer "y" for "L" in most of our noun words. Example: bayay
(house) for balay. Thus, Surigao is known as the land of "buyakyak at
payo-payo!" Anyway, forgive my ignorance also. The poem "Quacks at
Helicon" which I printed here was written in 1933 not during the war in
Domoyog.
I
can’t go on and on and bore you with a crash course in Philippine
poetry. But ‘Jimmy’ would feel I’m intruding into his domain, if go far
enough. Let me just say that the uncle I never met by his life and
works was my enduring inspiration. Now I know a little bit of him. He’s
an uncle too far no longer. Nor a stranger.
I
wish I have the time and space to share with you what I and the critics
hail as his greatest historical poem, greater and grander that both the
"Battle of Mactan" and the "Battle of Agincourt", entitled "The Spanish
Governor." Here’s a portion though:
I am a faithful son of Spain,
Spectre now walking in vain
This darksome hour the riven stones
That heard my haunting wail, my groans.
A Governor who ruled was I
But in this loneliness I sigh,
Yet pride to think that I did good
Against the friars brotherhood
Thus, I perished here,
A beggar, that once had no peer!
Art thou, art thou? -
Memory
Forgot the whims of history,
Twas dawn, and the glimmering stars
Were retreating in Night’s wars.
Art thou…?
Then as he flew, cried:
‘Saddest
Corcuera!"
Ah
memory! Just the same we forget the lessons of history. We have
forgotten Floresca and others like him and their immortal and lost
works. What would Philippine literature be and Nick Joaquin’s
unchallenged dominance of the field had Floresca lived long enough or
had his prodigious output of lost poems been published?
So now we turn to Yoyoy Villame— even for history and
poetry. Thus, have we far advanced and prospered as a people. What an irony.
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