Philippine Literature in the Post-War and

Contemporary Period
FRANCIS C. MACANSANTOS
PRISCILLA S. MACANSANTOS
Published in 1946, Ginto Sa Makiling – a novel by Macario Pineda, is the first work of note
that appeared after the second world war. In plot, it hews close to the mode of romantic fantasy
traceable to the awits, koridos and komedyas of the Balagtas tradition. But it is a symbolical
narrative of social, moral and political import. In this, it resembles not only Balagtas but also
Rizal, but in style and plot it is closer to Balagtas in not allowing the realistic mode to restrict the
element of fantasy.
Two novels by writers in English dealt with the war experience: (Medina, p. 194) Stevan
Javellana’s Without Seeing the Dawn (1947), and Edilberto Tiempo’s Watch in the Night. Both
novels hew closely to the realist tradition. Lazaro Francisco, the eminent Tagalog novelist of the
pre-war years, was to continue to produce significant work. He revised his Bayaning
Nagpatiwakal (1932), refashioning its plot and in sum honing his work as a weapon against the
policies that tended to perpetuate American economic dominance over the Philippines. The
updated novel was titled Ilaw Sa Hilaga (1948) (Lumbera, p. 67). He was to produce three more
novels.Sugat Sa Alaala (1950) reflects the horrors of the war experience as well as the human
capacity for nobility, endurance and love under the most extreme circumstances. Maganda Pa
Ang Daigdig (1956) deals with the agrarian issue, and Daluyong (1962) deals with the corruption
bred by the American-style and American-educated pseudo-reformers. Lazaro Francisco is a
realist with social and moral ideals. The Rizal influence on his work is profound.
The poet Amado Hernandez, who was also union leader and social activist, also wrote
novels advocating social change. Luha ng Buwaya (1963) (Lumbera) deals with the struggle
between the oppressed peasantry and the class of politically powerful landlords. Mga Ibong
Mandaragit (1969) deals with the domination of Filipinos by American industry (Lumbera, p.
69).
Unfortunately, the Rizalian path taken by Lazaro Francisco and Amado Hernandez with its
social-realist world-view had the effect of alienating them from the mode of the highly magical
oral-epic tradition. Imported social realism (and, in the case of Amado Hernandez, a brand of
socialist empiricism), was not entirely in touch with the folk sentiment and folk belief, which is
why the Tagalog romances (e.g., Ginto Sa Makiling, serialized in the comics), were far more
popular than their work.
It was Philippine Literature in English which tapped the folk element in the Philippine
unconscious to impressive, spectacular effect. Nick Joaquin, through his neo-romantic, poetic
and histrionic style, is reminiscent of the dramas of Balagtas and de la Cruz. His dizzying
flashbacks (from an idealized romantic Spanish past to a squalid Americanized materialistic
present) are cinematic in effect, ironically quite Hollywood-ish, serving always to beguile and
astonish.
 Francisco Arcellana, his younger contemporary, was a master of minimalist fiction that is as
native as anything that could be written in English, possessing the potent luminosity of a
sorcerer’s rune.
Wilfrido Nolledo, fictionist-playwright growing up in the aura of such masters, was the
disciple who, without conscious effort, created a school of his own. His experiments in plot and
plotlessness, his creation of magical scenes, made splendorous by a highly expressive language,
easily became the rage among young writers who quickly joined (each in his/her own highly
original style) the Nolledo trend. Among these poetic fictionists of the 1960’s were Wilfredo
Pasqua Sanchez, Erwin Castillo, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Resil Mojares, Leopoldo Cacnio and
Ninotchka Rosca. Of them all, only the last two did not publish verse. Their non-realistic (even
anti-realistic) style made them perhaps the most original group of writers to emerge in the post-
war period. But such a movement that slavishly used the American colonists’ language
(according to the Nationalist, Socialist Tagalog writers who were following A.V. Hernandez)
were called decadent (in the manner of Lukacsian social realism).
Post-war poetry and fiction was dominated by the writers in English educated and trained in
writers’ workshops in the United States or England. Among these were the novelists Edilberto
and Edith Tiempo (who is also a poet), short-fictionist Francisco Arcellana, poet-critic Ricaredo
Demetillo, poet-fictionist Amador Daguio, poet Carlos Angeles, fictionists N.V.M. Gonzales and
Bienvenido N. Santos. Most of these writers returned to the Philippines to teach. With their
credentials and solid reputations, they influenced the form and direction of the next generation
mainly in accordance with the dominant tenets of the formalist New Critics of America and
England.
Even literature in the Tagalog-based national language (now known as Filipino) could not
avoid being influenced or even (in the critical sense) assimilated. College-bred writers in Filipino
like Rogelio Sikat and Edgardo Reyes saw the need to hone their artistry according to the
dominant school of literature in America of that period, despite the fact that the neo-Aristotelian
formalist school went against the grain of their socialist orientation. Poet-critic Virgilio Almario
(1944- ), a.k.a. Rio Alma, in a break-away move reminiscent of Alejandro Abadilla, and in the
formalist (New Critical) mode then fashionable, bravely opined that Florante at Laura, Balagtas’
acknowledged masterpiece, was an artistic failure (Reyes, p. 71-72). It was only in the early
1980’s (Reyes, p. 73) that Almario (after exposure to the anti-ethnocentrism of structuralism and
Deconstruction) revised his views.
The protest tradition of Rizal, Bonifacio and Amado Hernandez found expression in the
works of Tagalog poets from the late 1960’s to the 1980’s, as they confronted Martial Law and
repression. Among these liberationist writers were Jose Lacaba, Epifanio San Juan, Rogelio
Mangahas, Lamberto Antonio, Lilia Quindoza, and later, Jesus Manuel Santiago. The
group Galian sa Arte at Tula nurtured mainly Manila writers and writing (both in their craft and
social vision) during some of the darkest periods of Martial Law.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes on the printed page, oral literature flourished in the outlying
communities. Forms of oral poetry like the Cebuano Balak, the Ilokano Bukanegan, the
Tagalog Balagtasan, and the SamalTinis-Tinis, continued to be declaimed by the rural-based
bards, albeit to dwindling audiences. In the late 1960’s, Ricaredo Demetillo had, using English
(and English metrics) pioneered a linkage with the oral tradition. The result was the award-
winning Barter in Panay, an epic based on the Ilonggo epic Maragtas. Inspired by the example,
other younger poets wrote epics or long poems, and they were duly acclaimed by the major
award-giving bodies. Among these poets were writers in English like Cirilo Bautista (The
Archipelago, 1968), Artemio Tadena (Northward into Noon, 1970) and Domingo de Guzman
(Moses, 1977).
However, except for Demetillo’s modern epic, these attempts fall short of establishing a
linkage with the basic folk tradition. Indeed, most are more like long meditative poems, like
Eliot’s or Neruda’s long pieces. Interest in the epic waned as the 1980’s approached. The 1980’s
became a decade of personalistic free verse characteristic of American confessional poetry. The
epic “big picture” disappeared from the scene, to be replaced by a new breed of writers
nourished by global literary sources, and critical sources in the developed world. The literary
sources were third world (often nativistic) poetry such as that of Neruda, Vallejo and Octavio
Paz. In fiction, the magic-realism of Borges, Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, among
others, influenced the fiction of Cesar Aquino, Alfred Yuson, and poet-fictionist Mario
Gamalinda.
On the other hand, the poets trained in American workshops continue to write in the lyrical-
realist mode characteristic of American writing, spawned by imagism and neo-Aristotelianism.
Among these writers (whose influence remains considerable) are the poet-critics Edith L.
Tiempo, Gemino Abad, Ophelia A. Dimalanta and Emmanuel Torres. Their influence can be felt
in the short lyric and the medium-length meditative poem that are still the Filipino poet’s
preferred medium. Some contemporary poets in English such as Marjorie Evasco and Merlie
Alunan, derive their best effects from their reverence for the ineluctable image. Ricardo de
Ungria’s and Luisa Aguilar Cariño’s poems, on the other hand, are a rich confluence of imagism,
surrealism and confessionalism.
The Philippine novel, whether written in English or any of the native languages, has
remained social-realist. Edgardo Reyes’ Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1966), for instance, is a
critique of urban blight, and Edilberto K. Tiempo’s To Be Free is a historical probe of the
western idea of freedom in the context of indigenous Philippine culture. Kerima Polotan
Tuvera’s novel The Hand of the Enemy (1972), a penetratingly lucid critique of ruling-class
psychology, is entirely realistic, if Rizalian in its moments of high satire, although unlike the
Rizalian model, it falls short of a moral vision.
Only a few novelists like Gamalinda, Yuson and Antonio Enriquez, can claim a measure of
success in tapping creative power from folk sources in their venture to join the third world
magic-realist mainstream.
But the poets of oral-folk charisma, such as Jose Corazon de Jesus, are waiting in the wings
for a comeback as astonishing as Lam-ang’s legendary resurrection. Modernist and post-
modernist criticism, which champions the literature of the disempowered cultures, has lately
 attained sufficient clout to shift the focus of academic pursuits towards native vernacular
literatures (oral and written) and on the revaluation of texts previously ignored, such as those by
women writers. Sa Ngalan Ng Ina (1997), by prize-winning poet-critic Lilia Quindoza Santiago,
is, to date, the most comprehensive compilation of feminist writing in the Philippines.

About the Authors:

Francis C. Macansantos is a Palanca Literary Award veteran winning first prize for poetry in
1989 with UP Press publishing his book “The Words and Other Poems” in 1997.
Priscilla S. Macansantos has won in the 1998 Palanca Literary Awards for her poetry
“Departures” and is now an Associate Professor at the University of the Philippines.

REFERENCE:

Philippine Literature in the Post-War and Contemporary Period. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14,

2017, from http://ncca.gov.ph/subcommissions/subcommission-on-the-arts-sca/literary-

arts/philippine-literature-in-the-post-war-and-contemporary-period/