Music of fire in the forest of darkness

Himno ng Apoy sa Gubat ng Dilim by Arlan Camba, Pia Montalban, and MJ Rafal (Aklatang Batlaya Publishing Collective, 2011)

Three young poets met in a book launch and gradually became close friends. They found common grounds on political issues, proletarian causes, and advocacy for social justice. They eventually decided to collect their poems and publish them independently. They called it Himno ng Apoy sa Gubat ng Dilim (Music of Fire in the Forest of Darkness).

The music of the poets' lines were indeed set on fire. They were so intense they glowed, creating a wall of forest fire keeping out the wild animals of the night. Their voices were raised loud from deep within the tangle of vegetation, making readers feel not only the heat but the light of day.

I spent the better part of the first of May listening to the music of these poems. The occasion couldn't be more auspicious. The book is dedicated to "the tillers and toilers of our land" ("para sa mga magbubukid at manggagawa ng aming bayan").

The selection of poems here displayed an uncompromising stance against those in power who perpetuate oppression and human rights abuses. It essayed not only the harrowing condition of marginalized farm workers and ordinary people in a cruel capitalist society. More importantly, it boldly called for immediate action and social reforms to resist that untenable condition.

Some pages of the book were like downsized placards containing the sentiments and exclamations of protestors and demonstrators in the streets. Yet the raging voices were often tempered by compassion for human struggles.

Arlan Camba opened the book with an invitation to the collection's rhythmic, fiery singing. His poems usually began with lines and chants heard in street demonstrations. Some of these may already be familiar gripes, tired and overused, but at the end of his poems, the final lines realigned the familiar protestations into a literal call to arms. The poet was crafting his novel protest through the fortification of his previous litanies of disenfranchisement. By reconstructing the street protest in a poem, it enacted its own galvanizing protest. The electric atmosphere of his protest poems secured empowerment through the power of words.

Here's the final stanza of "Gusto Kong Tumula" (I Want to Recite a Poem). It consolidated the poet's plan of a violent revenge on the bourgeoisie:

Gusto kong tumula, sapagkat gaano man kapurol at padaskul-daskol ang pananalinghaga, gaano man kapudpod ang mga pananaludtod,    sa tulad kong nagmamaka-makata may sasarap pa ba sa pagpatay gamit lamang ang salita?

I want to recite a poem,          however feckless          and reckless the act of composition          however clichéd          the imperative to create,           to the likes of me—poetaster—          is there anything more satisfying                   than to kill using words?

And here is the final stanza of Camba's "Saan Patungo ang mga Alitaptap?" (Where Are the Fireflies Going?):

saan patungo ang mga alitaptap? makapangyarihan ang lagablab ng apoy sa nagliliyab na kaluluwa;  tutupukin ang 'sang uniberso ng mga berso't talinghaga        ng pakikidigma... hahalakhak ang makata, luluha ng dugo ang mga salita, lalatay ang hagupit ng mga taludtod  sa isip, kaluluwa at katawan; sapagkat...  bantayan man sa magdamag    ang mga alitaptap walang pagsisidlan sa kasaysayan ang katapusan ng lahat-lahat...

where are the fireflies going?               forceful the blaze               of fire on combusting soul;               it levels one universe               of verses and the war's                     metaphors...               the poet screams in joy,                        words spill blood,               the lash of lines reddens               the mind, spirit and body;               and...               even if the flights of fireflies                  are closely monitored               the death of all               has no place in history...

The direct target of the poems was the the ruling class who erected a "forest of darkness" to strangle the poor "weeds", robbing them of sustenance, depriving them of air and the light of sun. The images were necessarily violent as they explicitly dramatized an all out war against the oligarchs.

Pia Montalban, the second poet, continued to fan the flames of the fire that will guide the way for those languishing in the dark prisons of poverty and powerlessness. She did not shy away from depicting contemporary issues that bedevil the present national administration. Issues like agrarian reform and the displacement of the poor were explored through the introduction of female personae, perhaps the poet's own. Her identification with the national body politic, as "Pi(lipin)a" for instance, was an inventive way of communicating a personalized vision/version of reality at the mercy of capitalism. The latter was a threat to sustaining the things that make humans human, like love.

In "Tunay na Sining" (True Art), Montalban probably described the three poets' unified ars poetica, their collective aesthetics of resistance. Here's an excerpt:

Patay ang manunulat  sa simulang maglakbay kanyang mga akda.         Ni hindi ito makapagmumulto sa bawat mailalathalang misteryo, buhay, kathang-isip o katotohanan kaya't mawawalang silbi mga hinabing salita kung mensahe'y nakasulat sa diyalektong wala nang nakauunawa. Mahalaga sa tula ang tugma, aliw-iw o daloy o alindog pag-indak sa tyempo't kumpas ng panitikang nakalipas, metapora't talinhagang magbibihis ng estetika Ngunit aking igigiit ito'y dapat na maging daluyan ng nilalamang may kahulugan. Nailuluwal ang sining kapag ang salita'y nakapagpipinta ng imaheng kumikintal sa diwa ng mambabasa-- ngunit sining na walang saysay kung imahe'y hiwa-hiwalay at pagkakaugnay-ugnay iilan lamang makapagbubulay-bulay Lalo namang sining na walang buhay sining na sa sarili lamang at sa iilan iniaalay.

The writer expires                   the moment her works take flight.          She will not be a specter          haunting each posthumoous          mystery, biography, fiction          or truth          and so words woven             become stale          if the message is writ          in a language no one understands.                    Rhyme in poetry is important,          rhythm, pacing, charm          dancing in time to the beat           of literatures of the past,          metaphors and figures          putting on an aesthetic          But I shall insist          it must be a conduit          of words of substance.           Art is birthed          when words illustrate          images that last          in the minds of readers--          art is worthless          when the images are disjointed          and coherence          only a few anticipates           More so the art that's lifeless          art that is offered           only to self, or a mere few.

The poet argued for simple art, grounded in reality and abhorring the fireworks of obscurity. If resistance art is to speak, then it has to speak with the legibility of black letters on white paper. It has to be meaningful to the large segment of society, those who are many but vulnerable.

MJ Rafal, the final featured poet, was the most experimental of the three. His poems were diverse narratives of playful forms and subjects. He showed a gift for storytelling and a mastery in the deployment of particularized details, as with the daily struggles of low income workers. If I make him sound like a writer of fiction, that was only because his poems here had an engrossing plot and action.

Below is one poem by Rafal, a sample of the anthemic output of this talented poet. It was dedicated to the memory of Alexander Martin Remollino (1977-2010): the poet, journalist, and activist who was an acknowledged influence and inspiration to many poems in the collection.

Pananatili kung isa ka nang hangin ngayon  ihip kang nagpapaalab ng mga sulo ng pakikibaka't pakikitalad ihip kang nagpapaindak sa mga palay at tubo ihip kang tumutuyo sa pawis ng mga manggagawa't magsasaka   kung isa ka nang hamog ngayon nakayakap ka sa mga talahib at dahon doon sa kabundukan at nagmamasid sa mga kasamang namamahinga't kasiping ng gabi butil ka ng hamog na kumikislap sa pagtama ng liwanag ng buwan sa munti mong katawan kung isa ka nang ulan ngayon hinahaplos ng masisinsin mong patak mga buhok at pisngi ng iniwang mga kasama't kaibigan nagpapaunawa na ika'y hindi nawawala at nananatili sa puso at dugo ng masa na iyong pinag-alayan ng buhay at musa kung isa ka nang apoy ngayon tinutupok mo ang mga tanikala ng pananamantala't inaabo ang inhustisya sinusunog mo ang mga barong at saya ng mga hunyango't elitista lalagi kang tanglaw sa mga tahanang kaniig ang isang pirasong kandila at kung isa ka nang lupa ngayon hayaan mong tumindig kami sa dibdib mo bigyan mo kami ng tuntungan na di matitibag ng mga medalya't trono hayaan mong magtanim kami sa dibdib mo ng mga binhi ng ganap na paglaya na aanihin namin, natin sa nalalapit na panahon

Abiding          if you're now turned into air you're the gust that flares up the torches of resistance and defiance the gust that sways the stalks of cane and rice   the gust that dries the sweat   of tillers and toilers of the land          if you're now turned into dew clasping the cogon grass and leaves         in the mountain and observing the people resting and enfolding the night  a piece of dew that shines when the light of moon grazes your tiny body if you're now turned into rain your too fine drops will stroke the hair and cheeks of friends and dear ones left behind telling them you are present, abiding in the heart and blood of the common mass to whom you offered your life and muse if you're now turned into fire you raze the shackles of abuses, turn iniquity into ash burn down the suits and skirts of elitists and pretenders you are ever the light of homes holding a sole candle in their midst and if you're now turned into earth let us stand tall on your chest give us a steady foothold that can withstand medals and thrones let us sow on your chest seeds of sustainable freedom that we will, shall reap in the days to come

The three poets of Himno ng Apoy are rock stars in their own right. One after the other, one catharsis after another, the poems were building into a concert for an important cause: the fight for a just moral order. The music was enough to see us through the night. Hardcore.


Thanks to K.D. for the book. Translations above are mine.

The Discovery of Global Warming

The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer R. Weart (Harvard University Press, 2003)



The Discovery of Global Warming (2003) takes a historical perspective in presenting the global warming theory. First proposed in 1896, the idea of a warming atmosphere gradually evolved from a crude speculation to a generally accepted scientific possibility and lately to a controversial and significant international political issue. In between were protracted discussions, consensus building efforts, and compromises among climate scientists.

The book systematically teases out the emergence of global warming and climate change and the revolutionary shift in scientific thinking that these made to bear on scientists. Knowledge about the subject has been greatly extended by debates among competing hypotheses and evidences. The ingenuity of scientists was only matched by the technological advances and their greater cooperation. It is notable how one scientific issue became an avenue for the collaboration of scientists from such diverse fields as oceanography, meteorology, biology, geochemistry and geophysics. Who would have thought that the clues to understanding the climate of the earth are hidden in the ice cores, in the drilled columns from deep ocean, and in coral reefs and tree rings?

The book presents a lively narrative of bickering scientists. It is full of momentous scientific incidents and discovery and wide historical analyses and perspectives. It sustains an enthusiasm in a subject that is gaining more and more import as new researches and global computer models give uncomfortable predictions about the future of humankind. Even as the book discusses complex concepts from seemingly disparate but actually well connected scientific disciplines, it successfully lays down the historical basis for climate change and makes convincing arguments for the present peoples to act on the issue at hand.

In the middle of the book, the author Spencer R. Weart of the American Institute of Physics made a good observation about the lack of significant imaginative works on the subject.

The world's image makers had failed to give the public a vivid picture of what climate change might truly mean. There was nothing like the response to the threat of nuclear war in earlier decades, when first-class novels and movies had commanded everyone's attention. Global warming featured in a bare handful of science fiction paperbacks and shoddy movies, where scientifically dubious monster storms or radical sea-level rise served as a background for hackneyed action plots. The general public was never offered convincing and humanized tales of travails that might realistically beset us: the squalid ruin of the world's mountain meadows and coral reefs, the mounting impoverishment due to crop failures, the invasions of tropical diseases, the press of millions of refugees from drowned coastal regions.

Indeed, despite the increased awareness about the phenomenon of global warming and climate change, their scientific basis has failed to colonize the imagination of many writers of fiction. The disaster movies generated by Hollywood are populated by characters wallowing in their shallowness and who were so overwhelmed by noise and special effects around them that the disaster itself seemed to consume them, the whole film, and the hapless audience. After watching these movies I always leave the theater in low spirits, as if my very humanity was violated by nature.

Decent fiction and films about global warming and climate change must be rare because the science behind them can be complex and technical. Too many natural variables are involved: wind, currents, ice sheets, clouds, aerosols, emissions, deforestation, etc. And it is hard to imagine what really is happening as the warming process is taking place far above us, in a blanket of gases surrounding the earth. Carbon dioxide from a variety of human and industrial sources is steadily accumulating in the atmosphere, trapping heat along with other greenhouse gases. In recent decades, the greenhouse effect is pulling up and up the global average temperature, with each decade breaking the previous one's hottest record.

A sure way to effectively dramatize the subject is to humanize it: to depict the adverse impacts of climate change to human society. But the drama, though loud in films, seems muted in fiction. The subject seems to naturally resist storytelling techniques. The subject matter simply upsets our conception of a perfect world order. Weart is spot on when he acknowledges that the theory on global warming subverts the deeply-ingrained cultural/religious worldview of many of us. Even early scientists, along with the skeptics of today, resist the idea that something seemingly benign and invisible can overhaul the balance of the natural world. The idea just runs counter to our ideal sense of a self-regulating world.

In this view, the way cloudiness rose or fell to stabilize temperature, or the way the oceans maintained a fixed level of gases in the atmosphere, were examples of a universal principle: the Balance of Nature. Hardly anyone imagined that human actions, so puny among the vast natural powers, could upset the balance that governed the planet as a whole. This view of Nature—suprahuman, benevolent, and inherently stable—lay deep in most human cultures. It was traditionally tied up with a religious faith in the God-given order of the universe, a flawless and imperturbable harmony. Such was the public belief, and scientists are members of the public, sharing most of the assumptions of their culture. Once scientists found plausible arguments explaining that the atmosphere and climate would remain unchanged within a human timescale—just as everyone expected—they stopped looking for possible counter-arguments.

Focusing on adverse natural, social, economic, and political impacts of global warming seems to be the default solution to the failure of literary imagination. But still, it will be hard to assign the roles of hero and villain in na increasingly hot world where highly industrialized nations are not ready to curb their parasitic dependence on energy. Plus, there's also the danger for the writer of being labeled an alarmist, if not a doomsday prophet or a madman. He will have to skirt the sentimental traps of the material.

I hope to see a reading list of novels on the subject. The closest books I have read about it are Frank Herbert's Dune trilogy, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Kristine Ong Muslim's poetry chapbook Night Fish.
 
Inter Ice Age 4 (1959) by Abé Kobo, about the melting of polar ice caps, sounds like a good one. The novel Bundu by Chris Barnard, about threats of famine and drought in a South African society, has been shortlisted in this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It, however, received mixed reviews from my favorite blogs (see the IFFP Shadow Panel's take: Winstonsdad's Blog, The Parrish Lantern, Tony's Reading List). I would like to think that the judges recognized the importance of the book's topic.

A quick Google search yields many promising fiction titles on climate change (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). So, there are novels being written about the subject. But are these works good enough to give justice to the subject? Which ones are most likely lasting contributions to the emerging genre? Must investigate further.

What I'd like to see in these books is how characters cope with and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Given the inherent uncertainties about what exact effects climate change have in store for us, I'd like to see how writers balance the unequivocal warming of the climate system with the speculative nature of the subject. I'd like to see how fiction will be used to explore the scientific ideas while at the same remaining sensitive to human struggles. In short, I'd like to see fiction itself as a strategy for dealing with the issues of climate change.

A specter is haunting the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have risen to the challenge and are able to explain most of the uncertainties behind human-induced global warming and the prospects for the future. Yet it remains a challenge to producers of literary fiction and popular films to come up with serious works about the subject, works that will galvanize readers and give them hope.

From Darna to Zsazsa Zaturnnah: Desire and Fantasy

From Darna to Zsazsa Zaturnnah: Desire and Fantasy: Essays on Literature and Popular Culture by Soledad S. Reyes (Anvil, 2009)


Ang aklat ay naglalaman ng limang sanaysay tungkol sa popular culture (komiks, pelikula, FPJ, Pacman, telebisyon, atbp.) at dalawang sanaysay tungkol sa panitikan (nobelang Ingles at Tagalog). Sa pagtataya ng antolohiyang ito, idagdag pa ang masinop na pagkakasalin ni Soledad S. Reyes ng nobelang Ang Ginto sa Makiling ni Macario S. Pineda, mamamalas ang masusing kaisipan ng isang manunuri ng panitikan at kultura. Madulas na naipahayag ang mga kumplikadong konsepto at ideya kahit pa sabihing nagmula sa isang akademiko. Maraming bagay ang matututunan. Halimbawa ay kung bakit hindi kailangang basta na lang isantabi ang mga produkto ng popular culture kagaya ng teleserye, mga formulaic na pelikulang aksyon at pantasya, pelikulang slapstick, Precious Hearts Romances pocketbooks. Kailangan ay tingnan sila sa konteksto ng kultura, kasaysayan, at panahong pinanggalingan nila.

Sa panitikan na bahagi ng aklat, masinop na nailahad ang epekto ng kolonyalismo, neokolonyalismo, at diktadurya sa pag-unlad ng nobelang Ingles at Tagalog. Naipakita rin ang balangkas ng mga pagbabago ng istratehiya, tradisyon, at tema ng mga nobela sa paglipas ng panahon, pati na ang iba't ibang paraan ng produksyon nito.

***

The book contains five essays about popular culture (Philippine comics, films, FPJ [the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.], Pacman [boxer Manny Pacquiao], television shows, etc.) and two essays on literature (novels in English and Tagalog). On the strength of this anthology, not to mention Soledad S. Reyes's fine translation of Macario Pineda's novel The Gold in Makiling, one encounters a first rate cultural and literary critic. For an academic, she has articulated well some rather complicated concepts and ideas. A lot of things are in store for the reader. One is persuaded, for instance, to not discriminate against the products of popular culture such as sentimental telenovelas, formulaic action and fantasy movies, slapstick movies, and chick lit pocketbooks published by Precious Hearts Romances. They have to be seen in the context of culture, history, and period that gave birth to them.

In the literature part of the book, Reyes systematically surveyed the effects of colonialism, neocolonialism, and dictatorship in the development of Filipino novels in English and Tagalog languages. She has outlined the shifting strategies, tradition, and broad thematic elements of these novels through the years, including the different modes of their production.

We should learn to examine not only what is being said—this is being too literal—but what cannot be said, couched in words and images that, upon closer examination, constitute a huge chain of meanings perhaps already understood by some instinctively, but still waiting to be deciphered more fully and systematically. The hope is that eventually, the layers of meanings, still lodged beneath the surface of things, will be made known in order to dispel the cloud of "unknowing" that hovers above us all.

A Time for Everything (Karl O. Knausgaard)

A Time for Everything by Karl O. Knausgaard, translated by James Anderson (Archipelago Books, 2009)

DETAIL FROM LAMENTATION (C. 1305) BY GIOTTO, SCROVEGNI CHAPEL

We were made into the likeness of God. Our ways and nature had been much investigated by thinkers and storytellers since the old days. Yet no one fully understood God, the divine. There were just too much assumptions and uncertainties involved in the contemplation. One of the ways the nature of the divine can be explored was through a study of an intermediate being, someone between man and God. The angels – less than God, more than men – could hold the key to an understanding of the nature of the divine. What angels are like was intermittently depicted in the Bible and in church murals. The fertile ground of literature was also used in dramatizing the acts of the angels.

A systematics of the angelic orders, based on the above premise, was what the Norwegian novelist Karl O. Knausgaard attempted in A Time for Everything (in UK: A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven). The literary imagination, along with its unlimited sympathy and generosity, was a robust stage in which to construct, from available materials, the conditions and assumptions on the angels as the direct link between the human and the divine. The manifold riches of a modern novel, unshackled by dogma, could approximate the variety of life experiences and their daily miracles. Its prose and form could hold up large vistas of physical and spiritual landscapes. The religious order of readers was constantly inducted into the novel's power to mesmerize, to quicken the senses and open up selves to radical ideas and identities.

Knausgaard did for the selected stories of the Bible – mainly from the Genesis – what José Saramago did to the gospels in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. The stories were familiar to us such that they had acquired the status of the "definitive, official version". Yet for Knausgaard, the Biblical stories must be calling for a creative adaptation.

The only things that have always been remembered are the story of the first people who were driven out of paradise and into the valley, the story of the two brothers Cain and Abel, and the story of the great flood. But all the details about these people and the world they lived in were gradually erased. And as each new age is convinced that it constitutes what is normal, that it represents the true condition of things, the people of a new age soon began to imagine the people of the previous one as an exact replica of themselves, in exactly the same setting. Thus Cain and Abel became nomadlike figures who lived and operated in a flat, burning hot, sand-filled world, of olive and fig trees, oases, camels, asses, robes, tents, and little whitewashed stone houses. Gone were all the pine trees, all the fjords and mountains, all the snow and rain, all the lynxes and bears, wolves and elk. In addition, all the infinitely delicate nuances in the relationship between the brothers were lost over time, such that only the bare details remained: Abel was good, Cain bad, Abel was a shepherd, Cain a tiller of the soil.

And so Knausgaard recreated some "lost" details in the Old Testament, retouching the obscured details like an art restorer working on a fresco that has faded from the accumulation of dirt and grime. He wanted to capture the "infinitely delicate nuances" (emphasized above) of the stories of the creation, of rival brothers Cain and Abel, of Noah and the great flood, of Christ on the cross, etc. This time the stories were not just centered on the fury of God but on the human and angelic struggles.

The selected characters acquired subtlety and realism beyond (or against) their traditional portrayals. The fount of these stories was God, the Author, but he probably will not appreciate the telling.

It is clear the whole time that the human condition is not something [God] has experienced. If he knows anything about it, it isn't from within. Only someone who lacks insight into the human condition could despair over its evilness, as the Lord does time and time again throughout the Old Testament. Perhaps he knew mankind, but he couldn't have understood them – or he wouldn't have been so surprised that they ate from the tree of knowledge, despite his emphatic prohibition, or that they could kill their own brothers, or that they built a tower almost up to heaven.

God, the narrator of the novel was implying, was not a good novelist. Being an inquiry into the angelic orders, the framework chosen to approach the divine must necessarily imbue the composition with an anthropocentric (novelistic) concreteness, tangibility, portents and omens, and subversion.

The story was framed by the figure of Antinous Bellori, an eccentric sixteenth century theologian who wrote On the Nature of Angels (1584). Bellori was a melancholic figure in the mold of Sir Thomas Browne – presumably there are two lines in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia epidemica of 1646 that referenced Bellori's book – and Robert Walser, with Bellori's specialized system of microscopic handwriting similar to Walser's "microscripts". The structure of Bellori's book was loosely that of the present novel.

On the Nature of Angels consists of three parts. The first contains a catalog of all 189 angelic manifestations in the Bible, and the second discusses what conclusions can be drawn about the angels from these. The third, which initially looks at angels' non-Biblical appearances, ends in a discussion about the question that is the work's main theme: Can the nature of the divine undergo change?

It was a plausible structure to ascertain the (changing) nature of the divine. The third part ultimately led to the exposition of Bellori's thesis on the mutability, and hence fallibility, of the divine, and it was closely tied to how the novelist fulfilled the requirements of the structure. How exactly the evidences to support Bellori's thesis was teased out by the narrator/commentator (a writer figure that conveniently distanced the novelist from the story) was a pleasure to behold. The conclusion was already provocative but the "proof" was a daring combination of logic, scientific deduction, art criticism, and literary speculation. It necessitated the evaluation of the concept of the divine through variegated narrative registers. Absolute categories were interrogated; official versions were glossed over; and the religious abstractions, viewed from a new prism of understanding.

Knausgaard's brand of prose, similar to that of his protagonist Antinous Bellori, was closely related to "his religious speculations": "While writing On the Nature of Angels, [Bellori] studied every conceivable and inconceivable text in which angels figured, and thus formalized his intuitive insight into angelic mutability". The product of this rigorous research was reflected in the book's hyperrealist prose: the descriptions were individually particularized in space and time, making every detail not only "a detail" but this detail:

Bellori contemplated everything he saw. Whether it was fish, waterfalls, trees, mountains, birds, insects, or flowers, he saw only the unique. If one reads his notes consecutively, from beginning to end, a feeling is gradually fostered of the infinity of the world. Not "trees" nor even "a tree" but this particular tree right here, now, as it is. Not "fish" nor even "a fish" but this unique fish right here, now, as it darts suddenly across the sandy bottom through the clear, sun-spangled water. Its tail's rapid movement from side to side, the stream of water through its gills, the flat shadow gliding over the bottom beneath it ...

The particularities of details were evident in the sumptuous landscapes and character sketches. Against the fleeting moment of time and the constrictions of space, those details seemed to float in the reimagined pastoral landscape of the Bible. The novel was a sobering call for curiosity and open-mindedness in an age of uprightness and morality. Skepticism could be a form of enlightenment if it did not compromise unconditional beliefs for something hardly understood. Lamech, Noah's father, contemplated a single piece of advice to give to another son of his. What he came up with was simple enough: Always ask yourself: what if it's the complete opposite?

A Time for Everything is an intelligent novel that dared to think the opposite of things and to rethink the dogmatic abstractions of the divine. With the passage of time, God had become an abstract God and the idea had become unassailable. The reverse, in fact, was always an option [emphasis added]:

It is hard to imagine, as Bellori said, that God and his divine creatures would exist without any sort of link with the human, raised completely over matter, as Thomas Aquinas and like minds maintained. As far as they were concerned, God in all his forms was absolute – absolute purity, absolute enlightenment, absolute perfection – but just what that absolute really was, or how it really developed, apart from being like light, is unknown. But because God in this way is defined as everything man is not, and never can be, it's easy to accept it and believe that things really are that way, and that this abstract God is the true God, when really it's the opposite: the abstract God is the more human, precisely because it equates with mankind's concept of what the most beautiful, the most elevated, and the most perfect is.

Despite such grand pronouncements, the book's intellectual rigor was not solemnized but rather metafictionally weighed. The fascinating story and religious speculations of Bellori, the adapted Bible stories, and the narrator's psychology at the end were all welded together by traditional suspense and vaulting improvisation. Each narrative block was a stunning set piece and, collectively, they carried Bellori's theory on the fall of the angels. What was brilliant about the whole thing was how within the novel's broad structure (borrowed from Bellori's fictional book) which the narrator was loosely mapping, the biblical stories were intricately tracing out the basic thesis through their own internal structures. The story of Noah, for instance, demonstrated a suspension of the linear narrative through successive digressions. As each digression closed its loop, the characters were revealed as chastised by the momentous events in their lives or shaken to the core by their encounters with angels – divine proxy – in any of their mystical forms. Readers might yet surface into the world with a more nuanced perception of God. And Bellori's mantra of negation might as well see us through: We know nothing. Nor is there anything to know.

Botchan (Natsume Sōseki)

Botchan by Natsume Sōseki, translated by Glenn Anderson (One Peace Books, 2013)


Botchan (1906) is a comic novel whose enduring appeal continues to entertain generations of Japanese readers. It's main character is a newly graduated Tokyo-bred young man sent to teach mathematics at middle school in an out of the way locality. As a young boy, Botchan, as he was fondly called by the household help Kiyo, is destined to be the black sheep of the family. His relationship with his father and brother is civil at best. Kiyo is the only one who was patient with him and who believed he will amount to something great. But he can be a bit foolish as he runs to all kinds of trouble.

Another time a distant relative sent me a western pocketknife. I was holding the blade up to the sun to show my friend how nicely it caught the light and he said, "Sure it looks nice, but I bet it can't cut."

"Yeah right," I said. "This knife'll cut through anything, I'll show you."

"Bet it won't cut through your finger."

Well I couldn't let him get away with that so I shouted You bet I will! and sliced through the back of my thumb. Fortunately for me the knife was small, and the bone was hard, so my thumb is still stuck to the side of my hand like it should be. But the scar will be there till I die.

The novel's comedy partly derives its laughs from the utter silliness of situations. Botchan himself is a strong character, surprisingly winsome despite (or may be due to) his sarcastic view of things and constant complaints about every little thing. He finds his match, however, with his co-teachers in the school. He finds himself in the middle of petty politics and bureaucratic maneuverings of his colleagues. Even his students are party to making his life in the country a living hell. His students start to stalk him and to make fun of him by daily writing up, on the blackboard, what he ate the previous night. And when he erupts into anger, it only seems to embolden his students.

When you take a joke too far it's not funny anymore. If you burn your bread it's not good anymore, it's just charred—but that was probably too much thinking for these little rednecks. They thought they could keep pushing it. What did they know about the world, living in a Podunk town like this? Growing up on a patch of grass with no charm, no visitors, and no brains, they'd see a guy eat tempura and confuse it for a world war. Pathetic twerps. With an education like this, I could imagine the sort of warped people they'd grow into. If it was all innocent fun I'd laugh along with them. but it wasn't. They may have been kids but their pranks were pregnant with hatred.

Botchan becomes the sore subject of endless jokes in school. This inflames him more and more even as he becomes the target of intrigues among his teaching colleagues. A couple of teachers are painted as duplicitous and scheming individuals. "Not a shred of human decency to be found in the whole place!" he cries at one point. To his credit, Botchan (the name can also have derogatory meaning) holds fast to his principles of honesty and simplicity.

It's like they believe you can't succeed in society without letting yourself rot to the core. Then they see someone who's honest and pure, and they have to sneer at them and call them Botchan and naive and whatever else they can think of that helps them get to sleep at night. If that's how people are going to be about it then we should stop telling children not to lie. If that's how they're going to be we should give children classes on how to lie and get away with it and how to doubt people and how to take advantage of others and so on.... Red Shirt was laughing because he thought I was simple. Well if we live in a world that laughs at the simple and honest, then I guess I should learn to expect it—but what a world that would be!

Natsume Sōseki effectively uses comedy in this otherwise serious critique of the education system run by corrupt leadership. In effect, he seems to be also mocking the shallowness and backwardness of a society that produced, and was perpetuated by, such kind of education. There are also hints of the clash between the rural/traditional mindset of the educators in the community and Botchan's liberal views coming from the open city of Tokyo. The entertainment value of the sometimes slapstick comedy is foil to the societal conflicts in the novel.

Another significant aspect in the novel is in providing a glimpse not only to this dire "isolationist" mindset of a provincial school but also the display of nationalism of the local people. Near the end of the book, Botchan witnesses a street parade celebrating Japan's victory over Russia during the war of the previous year.

The song went on, the lazy beat drooping like spilled syrup from a tabletop. [The drummer] made abrupt pauses in the beats to help the spectators find the beat, and soon enough though I don't know how they did it, everyone was clapping along. The thirty men started to whip their glinting swords to the beat, faster and faster. It was fascinating and terrifying to watch. They were all crammed so close on the stage that if one of them missed a beat, he'd be sliced to pieces. If they'd just swung the swords up and down there'd be no real danger, but there were times [when] they turned left and right, spun in circles, dropped to their knees. I half expected noses and ears to go flying. They all had control over their swords, but were swiping and flipping them in a space of two feet—all while crouching, ducking, spinning, and twirling.

The fascinating parade scene may be offering a glimpse into Japanese militarism in the early years of the twentieth century. Indeed there's a large gap between the discipline exhibited by the students in this street dance and the pettiness they are prone to in school.

In the afterword, translator Glenn Anderson admits that certain passages in the novel are omitted or altered in the interest of "readability and accessibility". The translation decisions to domesticate the novel are explained in the afterword itself. The resulting text appears to be an idiomatic novel that retains the comedy while making it sound contemporary. This is evident in the nicknames Botchan gave to his co-teachers. The novel itself has been translated five times already. (Here's a review comparing the translations of the first passage quoted above.) The present translation is highly readable, spunky, and fun, though I'm a little bit bothered by some typographical errors.


Review copy courtesy of the publisher.