Noli me tangere (novel)

Noli me tangere is the first novel by José Rizal, published in Europe in 1887, when he was 26 years old. The title is in Latin, and means "don't touch me." Rizal took these words from the Bible, specifically from John 20:17, in which Jesus, after his resurrection, avoids contact with Mary Magdalene.

Introduction

The novel played a significant role in the consolidation of Filipino nationalism; Although Rizal advocated peaceful means to obtain direct representation in the Cortes Generales, the authors of the revolution took advantage of his ideas. The novel was written in Spanish, the educated language at that time.

Rizal began his novel in Madrid; halfway through writing he moved to Paris, to later finish it in Berlin. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the well-known writer, volunteered his services to correct it.

In a letter to his friend, the Madrid-based Filipino painter Félix Resurrección Hidalgo Rizal explains the reason for the book's title:

The book contains things that no one among us has spoken to the present; they are so delicate that they cannot be touched by any person. As far as I'm concerned, I've tried to do what no one has wanted. I have wanted to respond to the slanders that for so many centuries have been piled upon us and our country.

The novel created so much controversy that only a few days after his first return to the Philippines (1887), Governor General Emilio Terrero y Perinat received him at the Malacañán Palace to inform him that his novel was considered subversive; Despite the fact that Rizal managed to placate the governor, a practicing Mason, anticlerical and with liberal ideas (a combination of ideas of Francophone origin and Anglo-Saxon development), he warned him that he could not resist the pressure of the Catholic Church against the book: he had received an opinion of the University of Santo Tomás de Manila in which the novel was described as "heretical, impious and scandalous in the religious order, and unpatriotic, subversive of public order, insulting the government of Spain and its behavior in these islands in the political order"; and warned that if it circulated freely through the archipelago "it would cause very serious damage to faith and morals, it would dampen or extinguish the love of those indigenous people for Spain and, disturbing the hearts and passions of the inhabitants of this country, it could cause saddest days for the Motherland". The persecution of religious orders can be discerned in Rizal's correspondence with his friend Fernando Blumentritt, from Leitmeritz:

My book made a lot of noise, everywhere they ask me about it. They wanted to excommunicate me because of him... I am considered German, spy, an agent of Bismarck, they say I am a Protestant, Mason, sorcerer, a cursed soul. He whispers that I want to set up plans, that I have a foreign passport and that I wander through the streets at night...

This novel and its sequel, El filibusterismo (1891), were therefore banned in the Philippines because of the image they gave of the corruption and abuse of the Spanish government and the country's clergy. A character that has become a stereotype in the Philippines is Padre Dámaso , a Spanish priest who does not respect his vow of chastity. For this reason, the child of an unknown father, especially if he is mestizo, is derogatorily called Anak ni Padre Dámaso , & # 34; son of Father Dámaso & # 34;.

However, some copies of the book were smuggled in, and when Rizal returned to the Philippines after completing his medical studies, he was deported to Dapitan, on the island of Mindanao; he was later jailed for "inciting rebellion"; through his writings. In 1896, at the age of 35, he was executed in Manila.

Plot

Noli me tangere is, at the same time, a novel of manners about the Philippines from the time before its independence from Spain, a romantic and sentimental novel about contradictory or impossible love affairs, and a plea against the moral degradation of Philippine society by the imposition of a religiosity bordering on superstition. To all this is added a political reflection on the difficult relations of the colony with its metropolis. His argument is the following:

Crisóstomo Ibarra, a young mestizo (son of a Spaniard and a Filipina), returns to his homeland after spending a few years in Europe to acquire a more cosmopolitan background. Upon his return, he discovers the terrible way in which his father died: falsely accused of envy, he dies in jail and his body is unearthed from the Christian cemetery and thrown into the sea at the direction of the town's parish priest, the Franciscan friar Dámaso. former friend of yours. Crisóstomo loves a young María Clara, and is reciprocated by her. Their parents had sealed a marriage promise for when Ibarra returned from Europe and at that moment both young people renewed their love pact.

Ibarra's arrival arouses the misgivings of powerful religious orders, who fear the bad influence Ibarra's progressive ideas could have on sleepy Philippine society. But, in turn, his return excites those who want the country's progress. One of Ibarra's first projects is to build a school in his town, San Diego, because he thinks that education is the best seed for the development and awakening of the conscience of Filipinos.

The core of the narrative revolves around the festival of San Diego's patron saint. Religious celebrations (processions, solemn masses and sermons) are mixed with other profane ones (abundant banquets, dances, street games and cockfights). At a banquet, before the intentional and malevolent provocations of Fray Dámaso, Ibarra physically assaulted the friar, as a result of which the religious declared him excommunicated. Earlier, on the day the school's foundation stone was laid, Ibarra had hurriedly escaped an assassination attempt, under the guise of an accident. Protected by the Captain General of the Philippines and by the Archbishop of Manila, Ibarra is released from excommunication and can resume his idyll with María Clara.

A new trap is plotted around Ibarra: being totally oblivious to the fact, he is accused of promoting a revolt against the Civil Guard headquarters and the Franciscan convent, as a result of which he is imprisoned and sent to Manila along with other presumed and equally innocent leaders of the rebellion. María Clara suffers blackmail because of the sinful origin of her birth and she is forced to break her commitment to Ibarra. At the end of the novel, Ibarra manages to escape from prison and from the country, although he is officially presumed dead in the escape attempt. Believing her lover to be dead, María Clara enters a convent.

Characters

Crisostomo Ibarra. He is the main character, around whom much of the story revolves. He is about a wealthy young man who returns to his homeland with the idea of contributing to the progress and development of the Philippines. In many aspects he is a transcript of Rizal himself (both have traveled Europe, have left their fiancées in a convent waiting for them and maintain a critical attitude towards the preponderance that religious orders hold in the social and political life of the archipelago). In politics, both are (at least in those moments) in favor of maintaining ties with the metropolis, although they demand from it a greater understanding of the autonomy and progressive independence of the Philippines. The failure of Ibarra in all the companies that he proposes and the ideas that, consequently, the end of the book expresses suggest a skepticism of the author about the disposition and capacity of the metropolis to undertake the profound transformations that would be necessary for a relationship to continue. peaceful between Spain and the Philippines; relationship that would have to be based, in any case, more on the autonomy of the archipelago than on the colonial subordination existing until then.

Three comments by Ibarra throughout the novel show us the progressive evolution and radicalization of the character. The first is taken from his initial meeting with the mad philosopher Tasio, shortly after his arrival in the Philippines. To his doubts about the goodness of Spain towards the Philippines and the difficulty of combining love for both parties, Ibarra replied: The Philippines is religious and loves Spain; The Philippines knows how much the nation does for her. There are abuses, yes, there are defects, I will not deny it, but Spain is working to introduce reforms to correct them, it is developing projects, it is not selfish (p. 260). And for this reason he rhetorically asks himself: Is love for my country incompatible with love for Spain? I love my country, the Philippines, because I owe my life and my happiness to it and because every man should love its country; I love Spain, the homeland of my elders, because, despite everything, the Philippines owes it and will owe it its happiness and its future (p. 261). Some time later, talking with the Captain General of the Philippines, who had supported him in the construction of the school, he confessed: Sir, my greatest wish is the happiness of my country, happiness that I would like to be due to the Motherland and to the efforts of my fellow citizens, united one and the other with eternal bonds of common goals and common interests. What I ask for, can only be given by the government after many years of continuous work and successful reforms (p. 363). But at the end of the novel, in conversation with Elías, who got him out of prison and with whom he has discussed the future of the Philippines on many occasions, his ideas show deep disappointment and the need for a new attitude, at least, pre-revolutionary: We, for three centuries, have extended our hands to you, we have asked you for love, we longed to call you brothers. How do you answer us? With insults and mockery, denying ourselves even the quality of human beings! There is no God, there is no hope, there is no humanity; there is only the right to force! (p. 555). In this sense, the final significance of the novel remains open, as will be verified throughout the following novel, which the author will refer to as the "second part" this.

María Clara. It is the romantic, sentimental and somewhat serialized counterpoint of the novel. A pure and idealized creature, she has to face opposing forces: love for Ibarra, naive and primitive religiosity, devotion to her parents. Her final resignation from Ibarra and her subsequent entry into a convent show the impossibility of a love that opposes the social and religious conveniences of a society bound by obscurantism and prejudice.

Around these two characters there are others, which can be grouped as follows:

The friars (especially Franciscans and Dominicans). They are the "bad guys" absolutes of the novel. Although there are two who stand out above the rest, Fray Dámaso and Father Salví, in general they all appear to us as racists and enemies of the Indians, vain, gluttonous, obscurantists, tyrants and little compliant with their vows (especially those of poverty and chastity).). They threaten the natives with all the pains of hell for their exclusive benefit and they practice a religiosity that has nothing evangelical. They enjoy absolute power and are even feared by civil authorities. Tasio, the philosopher, explains it this way to Ibarra: All your efforts would crash against the walls of the parsonage if only the friar waved his cord or shook his habit: the mayor, for any pretext, would deny you tomorrow what he has granted today, no mother would let her children attend school (p. 258). Rizal only saves the Jesuits (with whom he had studied in Manila) and that with no little irony: in a conversation between Tasio and Don Filipo, the former tells the latter: We, in the Philippines, go at least three centuries behind the cart; we are just beginning to emerge from the Middle Ages; that is why the Jesuits, who are backwards in Europe, from here represent progress (p. 489).

The illustrated ones or supporters of an evolution in the Philippines. They serve as support in the numerous and extensive discussions between him and Ibarra so that Rizal can clarify his ideas about education, religion and relations between the Philippines and Spain. They are, especially, the teacher, the lieutenant Don Filipo, the eccentric philosopher Tasio and, above all, the mysterious and symbolic Elías, Ibarra's frequent antagonist and, ultimately, his savior from jail.

The persecuted and the poor, innocent victims of the cruelty and indifference of the powerful. Sisa and his children Basilio and Crispín, Elías himself and the enigmatic Salomé, all of them, like those who fled in the mountains and in the caves, form a cohort of dispossessed on whom evil falls irremediably and for whom Rizal pities and humanizes.

The rich and the presumptuous, Filipinos and Spaniards, frivolous, indifferent to the pain and injustice they cause others, of a superstitious religiosity, grotesque and materialistic and on whom Rizal shoots all his acrimony. They are Captain Thiago, his second lieutenant and his concubine, the Espadaña couple and his relative Linares, the devotees of the church and a long ridiculous and grotesque etcetera.

Publishing fortune

The first edition of the novel (1887) had many difficulties to be distributed both in the Philippines and in Spain and a large part of the edition was confiscated by the political authorities. In the Philippines it was edited and circulated freely beginning in 1899 and has been in continuous reprint ever since. In 1961, the National Commission for the Centennial of José Rizal published a facsimile edition of the first edition, a constantly renewed reproduction. In 1986, coinciding with the centenary of the end of the writing of the novel, the National Institute of History of the Philippines published a facsimile edition of the original manuscript. Other editions of the novel have appeared in the Philippines in Tagalog and other vernacular languages, in addition to its English translation.

In Spain, the Sempere publishing house in Valencia published a very mutilated edition in 1902.^{[citation required]} The following year, the Maucci publishing house in Barcelona published the novel without any type of cuts and with very useful explanatory notes from Ramón Sempau. This edition by Maucci saw a few reprints in the first decades of the 20th century. It was not published again in our country until 1992 in Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica with a prologue by the novelist Jorge Ordaz. Quotations from the text have been taken from this edition. In 1997 another edition appeared in Círculo de Lectores with a prologue by Pedro Ortiz Armengol. In 2008 Ediciones del Viento de La Coruña published (in a very distorted edition, like its 2013 reissue) the novel with a prologue by Manuel Leguineche. That same year another edition appeared in Linkgua, in Barcelona.

In Latin America, at least two editions have appeared: one in Venezuela in 1976, in the Ayacucho collection with a prologue by Leopoldo Zea and a chronology by Márgara Russotto. The other, in Cuba, in 1983 in the publishing house Arte y Literatura. In addition, the novel has been translated, among other languages, into German, French, Hungarian, Polish, Indonesian, and Chinese.

The most rigorous modern editions of the novel in Spanish are the bilingual version (Spanish-English) curated by Isaac Donoso Jiménez and published in Manila in 2011 by the Vibal Foundation, and the version published by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for the development.